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 Reading is the origins of the diversity Christian beliefs that began the 2nd-Century CE.
High Sabbath Reading
For Pentecost May 27, 2012
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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When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others mocking said, "They are filled with new wine." But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: "'And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
"Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, 'I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.'
"Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.' Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of holy spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:1–47 emphasis and double emphasis added)
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Within the Sabbatarian Churches of God, it has usually been taught that the men of Judea—the three thousand baptized this day of Pentecost following Calvary—were in Jerusalem to observe the Feast of Weeks, one of the commanded three seasons that all males of Israel were to appear before the Lord (see Deu 16:16). This is probably so, but this is not what Luke writes three-plus decades after the fact: Luke has the devout Jews then in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven (“‘Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians’” — Acts 2:9–11) having homes in Jerusalem and thus being residents of Jerusalem although originally from somewhere else.
Jerusalem wasn’t Rome: Jerusalem was not an economic hub, was not on the major trade route from Arabia to Egypt, was not a sea port. Jerusalem’s major source of economic activity was the temple. For Jews, Jerusalem was the center of the world, but for most everyone else, Jerusalem was a backwater polis. Nevertheless, what happened in Jerusalem had regional importance and would have been mentioned in the annuals of the secular world.
If the three thousand devout Jews who were added to the Church on this day of Pentecost were residents of Jerusalem and if they devoted themselves day by day to the teaching of the first disciples, the Apostles, and to eating with the Apostles and to prayers, then the overall economy of Jerusalem—a city of then about 25,000 permanent residents—would have been adversely affected by the beginnings of Christendom. How could it be otherwise? If ten percent of the labor force of any city, especially one that was the center of a religious world, suddenly ceased work to devote itself to the Apostles’ teachings and fellowship, living not off the production of hands but off the sale of assets, everyone else in the city would notice and would be discussing the sudden conversion of so many.
But this isn’t what happened: virtually no one noticed the beginning of Christendom. In the hundred years that followed Calvary, there are only two surviving secular references to Jesus, with both of these references coming more than seventy years later. And in the surviving writings of Judaism, there are also only two references, with both of these coming after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. So apart from the collected 1st-Century writings forming the New Testament canon, Jesus was a real but relatively unknown historical figure—and this would not be the case if a tenth of Jerusalem’s population became His disciples on a single day.
If what was traditionally taught in the Churches of God—that these three thousand devout Jews were in Jerusalem from all nations in the Near and Middle East for the mandatory observance of the Feast of Weeks [Pentecost]—then the number of conversions and their relative unimportance is believable and makes sense in every way. This will now have those devout Jews who could remain in Jerusalem securing for themselves houses, but this will also have an undetermined number of these devout Jews returning to their homes after being with the apostles for a few days or even a few weeks; for wives and farms and businesses remained in every nation under heaven. Thus, the message of Jesus the Nazarene was declared within weeks to all nations as these devout Jews who had left wives and families at home to attend their farms and businesses while they, males, appeared before the Lord on this commanded observance as Moses commanded:
Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord GOD. (Ex 23:14–17)
Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you. (Deut 16:16–17)
Devout male Jews would have, if at all possible, been in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, and they would not have come empty-handed, but would have come with an offering to be left with the temple … because of the early hour when disciples were filled with spirit and began to speak in words that were heard as words of the mother-tongue of each of these devout Jews—this is far different from Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues—many or most of these devout Jews would not have yet appeared at the temple to give their offering (i.e., whatever they brought so that they would not come before the Lord empty-handed). Thus, most likely, the three thousand who were baptized gave their gift to the Apostles, where God was obviously working: they would not have been baptized by the Apostles if they had not believed that the miracle of hearing the Apostles’ words in their mother tongues was not a work of God. And after remaining with the Apostles for as long as they possibly could, they would have returned home with a little knowledge of Jesus, enough that they would have proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ to neighbors, friends, and families.
How much of what Jesus taught would these devout Jews really know or understand? If they had been in Jerusalem for the Passover, they would have been the ones who agreed to have Jesus crucified: this is what Peter declares, “‘Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men’” (Acts 2:22–23 emphasis added).
Peter tells these devout Jews that they, themselves, know that Jesus performed wonders and signs among, that Jesus wasn’t unfamiliar to them, that Jesus was foreknown to King David, that worshiping Jesus wouldn’t be a new thing but the fulfillment of an ancient thing—and in the 1st-Century, what was new wasn’t to be trusted; what was ancient was better and more trustworthy. Thus, Peter introduced David of nearly a millennium earlier in his message to establish the antiquity of worship of Jesus.
When Luke began to follow Paul, Luke was not a Jew. It is unlikely that Luke understood the need for a devout Jew to go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks in the same way that a devout Jew—or a Sabbatarian Christian who has kept the High Sabbaths for forty years—understood and felt this need. So from not having kept the Feast of Weeks from his youth, Luke would not have considered the economic and psychological dynamics in play if more than ten percent of Jerusalem’s population were suddenly baptized by disciples of Christ Jesus, whom Romans had crucified a little more than fifty days earlier. If ten percent of Jerusalem’s population were suddenly followers of Jesus, a much greater fuss would have occurred at the temple that did occur when Peter and John were called before temple officials. Plus, what sort of demand would have been placed on Jerusalem’s resources if, suddenly, ten percent of the polis’ workforce did not report for work on the day after the Feast of Weeks?
This is where personal experience comes into play: applying the experience of flying in from bush Alaska to keep Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles at Anchorage, and while in Anchorage staying in another Sabbatarian Christian’s home for however long, it doesn’t make sense for three thousand devout Jews who have come to Jerusalem to do as Moses commanded not to have returned home within a week after the High Sabbath. Actually, the person who has left behind his or her livelihood to come in to where the person believes God has placed His name will return home shortly after (hours after) the High Sabbath ends. And those who would have stayed, would be assembling in the homes of other Believers. So what Luke writes is believable, but what is vague—how many of the three thousand and of those added daily thereafter—returned to every country from which they came is an open question … what is certain is that many if not most of the three thousand who were baptized on that day of Pentecost following Calvary were not in Jerusalem a month later. Some undoubtedly were. But the impact of so many suddenly becoming followers of Jesus would have caused turmoil within Jerusalem that would have been recorded by secular sources, which are mostly silent about Jesus even a century after Calvary.
Miracles happen, with oral utterance occupying primary importance in the theology of Christianity; for the temporary nature of utterance—speech as phenomena—being solidified and given substance in inscription (chirographic or typographic) serves as the best model for the movement from this present world [represented by utterance] to the world to come [represented by permanency of inscription]. Therefore, it is logical for the first miracle to be done by Jesus’ disciples to be of transforming their speech, most likely in Aramaic, into the mother-tongue of each person who heard their words. The symbolism of this miracle is far greater than anything that has ever been said about it. Even the first disciples didn’t fully grasp its significance for they dwelt in a mostly oral culture so for them to appreciate the full significance of the miracle would be like asking fish to appreciate water.
The symbolism that comes into play in transforming words uttered in one language into words heard in another language, the mother tongue of the hearer, will be saved for another Reading. Today, it is what happened to Christianity in the period before anything is written that will be introduced, with this subject being further explored in later works.
Let there be no mistake: the Christian Church as the Body of Christ (Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it — 1 Cor 12:27) will have and will have had happen to it the same things as happened to the earthly body of Christ that was crucified on the 14th day of Aviv [April 25th Julian] in year 31 of the Common Era (CE).
Disciples will be crucified with Jesus (Rom 6:6) and will die individually and collectively as Jesus died, and will be resurrected from death individually and collectively as Jesus was resurrected from death. When disciples are individually resurrected from death is not when disciples collectively are resurrected from death: the first occurs upon Jesus’ return as the Messiah, King of kings and Lord of lords, but the latter—the Body of Christ being resurrected from death—occurs at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, with this event to begin the seven endtime years of tribulation.
The greater Christian Church should not—especially after the Council of Nicea—be mistaken for the Body of Christ. Some three hundred of approximately eighteen hundred Christian bishops, with the help of the Roman Emperor Constantine, buried the dead Body of Christ at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE in a manner analogous to Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus having buried Jesus’ dead earthly body as the first High Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was about to begin in year 31 CE. And as the earthly body of Jesus was dead and out of sight for the three days and three nights that He was in the Garden Tomb, the spiritual Body of Christ was and remains dead and hidden from sight until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, liberation from indwelling sin and death through being filled with the spirit of God.
A reasonable approximation for when the Body of Christ died can be made: the physical precedes and reveals the spiritual (Rom 1:20; 1 Cor 15:46) so with the Christian Church being the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), and with the earthly temple being razed in 70 CE as a result of Israel’s rebellion against Roman authority, we would expect to see the Christian Church being destroyed [dying] sometime shortly after 70 CE because of its rebellion against the Father and the Son — with Jesus having been crucified in 31 CE, and with the number “forty” representing the completion of a matter, we should expect to find that the Father gave His breath/spirit to no one after Passover 71 CE, and this seems to be the case.
How does one kill a spiritual entity—the Church as the Body of Christ is spiritual—an entity made alive through receipt of the divine breath of God? No person can kill such an entity, for no person can take from a son of God the breath of God in the breath of Christ that gave to this son of God indwelling eternal life. Even God the Father will not take from this person indwelling eternal life—life that He, himself, gave to this person when He drew this person from the world. But what God the Father would do and did do was to give no additional person indwelling eternal life after a certain time, with this time mark following the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Thus, by the Father adding no new recruitment to the few disciples who were actually born of spirit through receipt of the indwelling the breath of God in the breath of Christ (euphemistically known as the indwelling of Jesus) after 71 CE, the ravages of time on the fleshly bodies of these sons of God would have brought about their deaths by the end of the 1st-Century CE. Hence, the Body of Christ died with the death of the Apostle John (ca 100–102 CE) and did not exist as a living entity when Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, on his way to Rome to be martyred for heresy, wrote “‘Be subject to the bishop as to the commandment’ (Ign. Trall. 13.2); ‘We are clearly obliged to look upon the bishop as the Lord himself’ (Ign. Eph. 6.1); ‘You should do nothing apart from the bishop’ (Ign. Magn. 7.1)” [citation is from Bart D. Ehrman’s Lost Christianities. Oxford. 2003. page 141].
Christianity in its various forms during the entirety of the 2nd-Century was spiritually lifeless, the spattered blood of the crucified Body of Christ that remained to be washed away by the rains of time. Therefore, the body of scholarship that looks to the writings of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and others of like ilk examines not the living Body of Christ, but the dead Corpse of Christ to see what can be ascertained about the Body that will be returned to life at the Second Passover liberation of Israel. This can be likened to examining a road-killed fawn to learn what can be known about the appearance of the buck that sired the fawn … from the dead and decomposing fawn, how much can be learned about the antlers of the buck that gave life to the fawn? From examining the writings of Nicolaitan heretics such as Ignatius, what can be gleaned about the Elect, disciples truly foreknown by the Father, predestined, called, justified, and glorified through receipt of the breath of God in the breath of Christ, thereby giving everlasting life to the inner self of the disciple? What can be known about the Body of Christ by studying spiritually lifeless spinoffs? This would be like trying to learn about the endtime Philadelphia Church through examining the writings of Ellen G. White because one of the pillars of Philadelphia was reared by a Seventh Day Adventist stepfather. How much could be determined? That Philadelphia probably keeps the Sabbath, and probably avoids eating unclean meats. And even this is a little more than what is actually shared by Philadelphia and Seventh Day Adventists.
Now, back to the three thousand added to the Church on that day of Pentecost following Calvary: Jerusalem’s population, when not swelled by thousands of devout Jews from distant nations who had come to the temple according to their understanding of Moses’ commands, was not the size of Rome or even of major cities in Africa or Asia. It was rather smallish in size, and it lacked the resources needed to support a sudden permanent increase in unproductive population. In reality, Jerusalem’s primary industry was temple observance. It was the thousands of devout Jews who did not come empty handed to Jerusalem three times a year to appear before the Lord that supported the city and the temple. Thus, for many of those who had come not to return home or not to give their gift to the temple would have had profound ripple effects that are not seen in the Book of Acts. Therefore, it must be assumed that many or most of the three thousand baptized on that day of Pentecost returned home after a week or so with rudimentary knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah. And it must be assumed that of those who returned home, each began to teach what he knew of Jesus to friends and family, with most of Judaism being unwilling to accept the concept of a Suffering Messiah (the Messiah was supposed to come as a conquering king). This would mean that most of those who returned home had little success in proclaiming Christ Jesus to friends and family, a situation all too familiar to endtime Sabbatarian Christians.
There are some things that must be realized: there is no Scripture available to these devout Jews beyond personally having (if rich) a copy of the Septuagint or access to the scrolls in the local synagogue. These devout Jews would know Moses by having heard Moses read to them on the Sabbath if they were not very rich. Therefore, their awareness of the nuances found in Moses’ writings would not have been great. They would have known the overall story of Israel. They would have known of the idolatry of the kings that sent the House of Israel and the House of Judah into captivity. They would not necessarily have been able to read, but their memories from use would have been greater than endtime disciples who can pickup a copy of the Bible and read here and there until they locate the Scripture passage that had vaguely come to mind.
But while memory is enhanced in oral cultures or in cultures with a high level of orality, the technical precision that has come to be expected by inscribed cultures wasn’t present … when one of the three thousand baptized on that day of Pentecost following Calvary went to tell his wife or his neighbor about what had happened, he would have correctly reported having heard the words of the Apostles in his mother-tongue, but how much would he have remembered about what he was told about Jesus? Certainly the high points. Certainly the crucifixion and resurrection account? But what about the sayings of Jesus, sayings he hadn’t personally heard but only heard through these sayingsssss being recalled by the first disciples.
Remember, these devout Jews were familiar with some of the signs and wonders Jesus did, and they had condoned Jesus’ crucifixion, but what they needed most from the Apostles were Jesus’ sayings; thus, the first thing the Apostles would have done is get together and first commit to memory then to inscription the sayings of Jesus. The first written texts produced by disciples would not have been accounts of what happened to Jesus—there were living eyewitnesses who could detail the things that Jesus did—but collections of Jesus’ sayings that were metaphorical and therefore, really not translatable without being transformed in the translation.
Now, take the three thousand as a real number: if I spoke to three thousand without a microphone and electronic enhancement, how many would actually hear what I have to say? Maybe three hundred? Maybe only thirty or forty? How about if I could truly project my voice, and I launched into recounting how Jesus fed the four thousand, or fed the five thousand—would the three thousand not trust what they already knew about Jesus over what they could at best only partially hear? How much more than the overall details of these two events could be heard, let alone remembered?
From the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand at Passover (John chap 6) when Jerusalem’s population would have been swollen through devout Jews coming to the temple for the spring holy day season, endtime disciples can know that if the first disciples worked a similar miracle as Jesus worked, the three thousand who converted that day of Pentecost could have been fed enough to get them through the next day or two, but no such miracle is recorded. If any such miracle had occurred, it would have been duly noted. Therefore, the question remains: how and where would Peter and the other first disciples have fed and housed the three thousand if the entire number had remained together, praying and studying and living together of one accord? The Jesus Movement would have attracted so much attention to itself it would have seemed a threat to Roman authorities as well as a threat to temple officials. It simply could not have been long accommodated without getting itself mentioned in secular and/or Jewish writings of mid 1st-Century CE. And there is no mention of this Jesus Movement outside of four gaunt references, two in secular sources, in the first century after Calvary other than in the writings of disciples.
Before proceeding, the persistent assumption that Paul taught a gospel of lawlessness needs to again be refuted: here is Paul’s gospel in his words (in translation)—
Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same [unrighteous — from chap 1] things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." 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 2:1–29 emphasis and double emphasis)
For Paul, circumcision still mattered, but not circumcision of the flesh. Rather, the circumcision that mattered was of the heart, with this circumcision being an attribute of the New Covenant, promised by Moses in the Moab Covenant (Deut chaps 29–32) and explicated by the prophets, notably Jeremiah (31:31–34; 16:14–18; 23:3–8), Ezekiel (chap 36; 20:33–44), and Isaiah (11:11–16). And the terms of what Paul identifies as the righteousness based of faith (again, the Moab covenant: Rom 9:31–32; 10:6–8, cf. Deut 30:11–14) is that when the Israelite is in a far land (is far from God), if this Israelite will turn to God with all of his heart and mind and obey all that is commanded in the Book of Deuteronomy, the Lord will return the Israelite to the Promised Land and will circumcise his heart (Deut 30:1–10, notably v. 6).
Circumcision is not and never was part of the Law Moses gave to Israel: circumcision was given to Abraham to symbolically return Abraham and his seed to the nakedness of Adam before he sinned in the Garden of God by eating forbidden fruit. Physical circumcision has nothing to do with the inner self. Outward circumcision has everything to do with the outer self that is to the inner self as the Woman is to the Man. Thus, when the disciple is born of spirit through receipt of the breath of the Father in the breath of the Son, the inner self is given life it did not have before—not physical life, but heavenly life—and the indwelling of Christ in this now living inner self is as the inner self is to the fleshly body, thus making the fleshly body twice removed from God and making the relationship between the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the outwardly circumcised Israelite analogous to the relationship between the glorified Christ Jesus and the glorified inner self of the disciple.
The scholar who makes outward circumcision a part of the Law Moses gave to Israel is either ill-informed or intellectually dishonest. This is not a person whose teachings are to be trusted. In fact, this person needs a teacher for he or she is not skilled in rightly discerning the Law of God.
But Paul realizing that with the coming of Jesus and the giving of the spirit, the Law had moved from being written on two tablets of stone—the two tablets Moses lugged down from atop Mount Sinai (Ex 34:29), the two stone tablets sculpted by Moses (v. 34) and on which Moses ended up writing the ten commandments (vv. 27–28)—to being written on two tablets of flesh … consider, when Moses ascended into the cloud, Israel had received the covenant and had agreed to do all that the covenant required (Ex 24:3), with the Ten Commandments having entered into Israel through the hearing of their ears, not through the sight of their eyes. The Ten Commandments had about them an ephemeral quality in that they were not inscribed words, but spoken words. Yet they carried the force of law, the power to bestow life or death upon each Israelite. But Israel did not treat them as laws inscribed on steles, but as having little importance once Moses was no longer with the people but had returned to the Lord in the cloud—and in this manner, Moses is a faithful shadow and copy of Christ Jesus, who delivered the Father’s words to His disciples, then returned to the Father where He, Christ, would receive instructions on how to build the temple of God. And while receiving these instructions, the people broke free and returned to their idolatrous worship, making for themselves gods [elohim] to go before them. Thus, by the giving of the commandments—by Jesus giving to His disciples the Father’s words—sin was made alive so that sin could devour Israel in the wilderness and Christians at the beginning of this Common Era. In both cases, Moses and the Prophet who was like Moses (Deut 18:15) were not present when the people broke free to engage in wild idolatry, but were with God, just not the same God for Moses was with the God of the living (Matt 22:32) whereas the glorified Jesus is now with the God of dead ones.
In the days of Moses, only the fleshly bodies of Israel or of other human persons had life. The inner selves of all peoples remained consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as sons of disobedience. No person is now or was in the days of Moses born with an immortal soul. Thus, Moses and the people of Israel represented a two-dimensional canvas upon which a three-dimensional story was being presented in a manner analogous to how three-dimensional narrative sculptures are represented in the two-dimensional formline carving of Pacific Northwest Coast Native Americans—and in their two-dimensional form, Israel had one God, the Lord [YHWH] (Isa 45:21 et al).
The above is the great sticking point for rabbinical Judaism today, and for scholars trying to understand the dynamics of the 1st-Century Christian Church … the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was then born of the Father when the spirit descended upon Him in the bodily form of a dove. The people of Israel never knew the Father, the God who was concealed by the creation (see Eccl 3:11) in the Tetragrammaton YHWH, four consonants which were never pronounced with their vowels sounds (hence, never uttered) but which if pronounced would have formed the word YaHd~nWaiH that is in reality two words, two deities, <YAH> plus another such (the d~n syllable) word/deity, <WaiH>, jointed to the first as a man is joined to a woman in marriage, and with the <ai> vowel of <WaiH> forming a diphthong, a complex speech sound that begins with one vowel sound and quickly (within the same syllable) moves to another vowel sound.
Only by Israel never pronouncing the Tetragrammaton could Israel maintain its ignorance in assigning numerical singularity to the concept of unity. Plus, there was no better way to represent the God of the living and the God of the dead ones that were together one entity as a man and woman in marriage are one entity than to use the Tetragrammaton YHWH as the visual signifier representing one God and to use the word Adonai as the sound image representing this visual signifier … the people of Israel had both the visual signifier representing God as well as the sound image representing the vowels for this consonant-only signifier (as per Semitic language paradigms). Israel had the separating signifier that would divide God the Creator from the God of dead ones if the people of Israel had put the ephemeral nature of utterance together with the permanence of inscription. But it is Greek that gets credit for creating an alphabet with vowels; that gets credit for inscribing vowel sounds along with consonants that tend toward silence [consonants are the interruptions of the vowel stream at specific locations from the lips to the back of the throat — if a word is known, only the consonants need to be inscribed, but if a word is not known, it can never be sounded out without inscribed vowels; thus the Greek development of the full alphabet is the most democratizing aspect of Greek thought and culture].
Returning now to the conversion of three thousand devout Jews on Pentecost: these devout Jews at some point in their lives returned home, with the likelihood of most of them returning home within a week after Pentecost being high, especially for the ones who didn’t live terribly far from Jerusalem. And how much would they have known about Jesus? Not that much. How much would they have known about the Law and the Prophets? Quite a lot. Thus, they would have searched the Scriptures to find all they could about Jesus, and they would have taught others what they discovered in Scripture …
The Circumcision Faction that opposed the Apostle Paul came from the devout Jews who on that day of Pentecost heard the Apostles’ words in their mother-tongues. Like Paul, they knew Scripture. But unlike Paul, they did not comprehend that the giving of the spirit introduced the New Covenant and therefore moved what was outside the Israelite to inside the Israelite—and in most instances, they were correct: few were the converts who were actually born of spirit; who were under the New Covenant. Most converts to the Jesus Movement were not born of spirit. Nothing inside of them changed when they were baptized. For them, baptism in the name of Jesus did no more than John’s baptism had done for his disciples.
The devout Jews who heard Peter speak on that day of Pentecost, with Peter not really understanding what was happening—where were the signs in heaven that were to accompany Joel’s prophecy (see Joel 2:28–32)—were not likely to listen to the Apostle Paul but were more likely to consider themselves Paul’s superiors, for they were longer in the faith and they had never persecuted the brethren (if they ignored their approval of Jesus’ crucifixion). Therefore, from the three thousand and those added daily thereafter came the diversity of beliefs that led to the fruition of the death of the Body of Christ seventy years later, with this death actually beginning thirty years before (ca 71 CE) when the spirit was no longer being given by the Father to converts.
Beginning when the three thousand returned home from Jerusalem, everyone had a portion of the truth, but none—including Peter himself—fully understood or comprehended the truth. Therefore, the early Church was not a unified Body sharing one theology, one Christology that summer of 31 CE, but consisted of many devout Jews taking knowledge of Christ Jesus home with them to every nation of the world. It would have been a miracle if there were less than three thousand variants forms of the Jesus Movement a year after Pentecost—and the battle that was fought over control of the messaging of Jesus as the Messiah will be picked up in the Weekly Sabbath Readings … the Apostle Paul allegedly won this battle, but not really; for the gospel [good news] that Paul taught (i.e., the movement of circumcision and the Law from the flesh to the inner self) was assumed to be a lawless message, a message that resonated with those converts who remained sons of disobedience. Thus, heretics were winners, but this is how it had to be for the shadow reflects the reality that casts the shadow. And the shadow of the Body of Christ was the earthly body of Jesus the Nazarene that was crucified at Calvary.
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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."