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 selection is the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

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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: In the course of the calendar advancement, greater Christendom will celebrate the resurrection of Christ Jesus on the day when His resurrection should be observed as the Wave Sheaf Offering, an appointed feast of the Lord that is to be kept by all generations of Israel as is the weekly Sabbath to be kept. And as with the Sabbath commandment, which moved from being a law written on stone tablets that governed the actions of the hand and the body to being a law written on the fleshy tablets of the heart and the mind to govern the thoughts of the mind and the desires of the heart, the Wave Sheaf Offering moved from being the waving of the first ripe sheaf of Judean barley to being the celebration of Christ Jesus’ acceptance by the Father.

When the old written code inscribed in stone tablets was abolished—this code physically divided humanity into two divisions, the Circumcised and the Uncircumcised (Eph 2:11-22)—and a new covenant was made with Israel, a covenant written on hearts and placed in minds (cf. Jer 31:33; Heb 8:10), the nation of Israel went from being the physically circumcised nation to being a spiritually circumcised nation, this spiritual circumcision coming after hearts are cleansed by faith. The covenant made with the former nation of Israel began with the marriage made at Sinai, and ended with the help-mate murdering its Husband, who had put the nation away for its adulterous behavior (Ezek chaps 16 & 23). Thus, the murdered but resurrected Husband was free to marry another (Rom 7:1-4), but not another physical nation, for He will not again enter His creation—the Logos, as Theos, came as His son, His only (John 3:16), to end the marriage He made at Sinai (Exod 19:5-6) when He entered His creation to be seen in His glory [His backside] by the man Moses (Exod 33:20-23), and to be seen from a distance by Moses, Aaron, Nadob, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel (Exod 24:9-10) … the marriage of the Lord to Israel was for the purpose of producing offspring, just as is the marriage of a man to a woman. But few offspring came from this marriage, for the nation would not walk in the ways of the Lord, nor would the nation quit profaning His Sabbaths (Ezek chap 20). Thus, as the promise did not go to Abraham’s eldest son, Ishmael, but to his next son, Isaac—and as the promise didn’t go to Isaac’s eldest son, Esau, the twin born first, but to the younger twin, Jacob—the promise of salvation didn’t go to the Logos’ eldest son, the natural nation of Israel (Exod 4:22), which the Apostle Paul compares to Hagar (Gal 4:21-31), but to the holy nation (1 Pet 2:9) born second, which Paul compares to Isaac.

But from Isaac comes two sons, twins, one hated before birth, one loved (cf. Mal 1:2-3; Rom 9:13). Likewise, two sons are in the womb of the Church, struggling as Esau struggled with Jacob in the womb of Rebekah (Gen 25:22). One is hated by the Lord even though no sin is presently imputed to it, for this son remains cloaked in the mantle of Grace. The second son is loved even though this son is deceitful, for this son practices walking uprightly before God while wearing the mantle of Grace. The first son walks lawlessly before God, profaning His Sabbaths and ignoring His commandments. The second son keeps the commandments that are written on heart and mind. The first son labels the second son a legalist, and openly hates his law-abiding brother, whose keeping of the commandments convicts the first son of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The second son will, in death, escape his elder brother by figuratively fleeing into Assyria or the land of Haran; for this second son falsely teaches hundreds of doctrines that God will not allow this son to teach to the third part of humankind (Zech 13:9) when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh.

Two sons of spiritual Isaac. Twins. One hated. One loved. Both struggle against the other in the womb of the Church, the last Eve. The Apostle Paul reminds Roman converts that God told Moses that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and compassion on whom He will have compassion (Rom 9:15 citing Exod 33:19), and the context of the Lord telling Moses that He will be gracious to whom He will has Moses pleading for the nation’s life after the golden calf incident—the Lord would not accept Moses’ life in exchange for the lives of all of Israel, nor would He take Moses’ life for the sins of Israel. Instead, Israel was figuratively placed on a very short leash so that when these people rebelled against the Lord in the wilderness of Paran (Num chap 14), all Israelites counted in the census of the second year (Num chap 1) died in the wilderness and never entered God’s rest (Ps 95:10-11), with the exception of Joshua, who served Moses, and Caleb, who had a different spirit in him. And all of spiritual Esau—that greater portion of the Christian Church that profanes the Sabbaths of God—is on its figurative short leash, and will be condemned to death when it rebels against the God, and tries to enter His rest on the following day, the 8^th day, instead of the 7^th.

The struggle of the hated and the loved twin in the womb of the Church has seen the hated son drown disciples who would be baptized as adults [the Anabaptists], has seen the hated son commit many of the greatest atrocities humanity has known, has seen that hated son take his lawless gospel to the world in previously unimagined power, and has seen the loved son passively absorb the abuse that came from keeping the law by faith. This loved son is now largely ashamed of the identifier Legalist; for the hated son has so effectively twisted the epistles of Paul (as the Apostle Peter said was already being done in the 1^st Century — 2 Pet 3:15-17) into its lawless gospel that the message this son teaches confuses even the spiders of Google that hang as Jonathon Edwards’ spider over the flames of hell … meat is to be preached in due season, with the same subject material recycled year by year, each time, though, with additional understanding.

The day on which the Wave Sheaf Offering is to be observed epitomizes the hated son’s twisting of Paul’s epistles: from the days of Moses (his actual lifetime), Israel was commanded to celebrate the resurrection of Christ Jesus and His acceptance by the Father. But the natural nation of Israel, like Ishmael, the firstborn son of Abraham, was not of a spiritual promise. Natural Israel was (and is again) a physical nation made with hands and the cutting away of flesh. It was a nation in bondage to sin and death, a nation that grew in the hill country of Judea as if it were the barley and wheat it harvested, a nation that forms the lively but spiritually lifeless shadow of the Church, a nation that because of its lawlessness was given statutes by which it could not live (Ezek 20:25-26), with these statutes not being the commandments of God but ordinances commanding the burning of firstborns.

The visible Christian Church, the spiritually circumcised reality of the physically circumcised nation of Israel, has also, because of its lawlessness, been commanded to burn its hated firstborn son in the lake of fire, another harsh statement that is supported by the Church’s refusal to repent of its lawlessness and its profaning the Sabbaths of God. Even today, when asked why the visible Church will not keep the Sabbaths of God and even this observance of the Wave Sheaf Offering, learned theologians will verbalize banal excuses about Jesus fulfilling the Law and the Prophets so Christians can live lawless lives—they will say something about Jesus being the propitiation for the sins of Christians; that when a person invites Jesus into the person’s heart, Jesus’ keeping of the commandments excuses the Christian’s failure to even attempt to keep the commandments. So, yes, the Church, like natural Israel, has been commanded to spiritually burn its firstborn sons in the lake of fire for the same reasons that natural Israel was given statutes that defiled the nation, and should have made it abhorrent in its eyes. The visible Christian Church should abhor itself, but instead, it celebrates its lawlessness and all manner of unrighteousness even though it knows God’s decrees that every person who practices lawlessness deserves to die.

As the natural nation never repented of its evil doing, keeping only the statutes given that defiled the nation, the Church has visibly kept only the statutes that showcase its lawlessness and its ongoing profaning of the Sabbaths of God, either of which will send its firstborn hated son into the lake of fire.

Again, two sons. One is today celebrating Easter. The other is either avoiding celebrating this day so as to not celebrate Easter, or is observing the Wave Sheaf Offering. The firstborn son of the Church will have assembled before dawn to observe the rising sun on a cold, snowy morning in much of North America, then dressed in its finery, will now be hearing a message about Jesus’ resurrection, before it sits down to a ham dinner as families gather together on one of two or three annual occasions … what can be wrong with families getting together, this firstborn son will ask, little realizing that those who sanctify and purify themselves, following after one another, eating pig’s flesh, shall come to an end together (Isa 66:17), for many will be the slain of the Lord when He comes (v. 16).

Jesus’ appearance before his Father and His God on this day should be commemorated:

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The reader should now read John chapters 19 & 20; followed by Luke chapter 24 and Matthew chapter 28.

Commentary: As the last Adam, the first spiritual man, Jesus was the first sheaf of the early barley harvest that was accepted by God. The beloved sons of God who hear Jesus’ words and believe the one who sent Him will constitute the remainder of the barley harvest. And this will be the message of the last High Sabbath of Unleavened Bread.

Two harvests, barley and wheat—sin will make merchandise of these two harvests during the seven endtime years. Only those disciples who have been “processed” as oil and wine (Rev 6:5-6) are the processed products of the olive and grape harvest that will escape being merchandised by sin. It is these who ate the bread and drank from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed, the 14^th of Abib, the Preparation Day.

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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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