Dear Friends,
This Sabbath is followed by a new Moon and then next week we have Pentecost,
The Feast of Weeks. We will have counted the fifty days and we wait on the Holy
Spirit.
In this time we are reminded of just what is involved in that feast and what
our responsibilities are in the preparation for and carrying out the days of
the feast.
This two day Sabbath and New Moon are an advantage to us in being able to use
the time off on this weekend in the western world in order to study the faith
and prepare for the following two day feast. Some of our people in the East
and Middle East of course do not have the same two day system. However, we should
use the time we do have available to study.
We should remember the Passover and what it is that we are called to do. This
period of the fifty days from the Wave Sheaf offering is critical in our understanding.
The original system was as we keep it, from the Sunday within the Feast of Unleavened
Bread for fifty days until the Sunday following the seventh Sabbath. The Jews
changed the system to the period following the First Holy Day in order to hide
the fact that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and that he ascended into heaven
before God as our acceptable sacrifice on and as the Wave Sheaf Offering. As
I have said many times no other doctrine is attacked more vehemently by the
adversary than this doctrine.
The Wave Sheaf shows that Satan was judged by Christ's actions and sacrifice
and his acceptance before God.
The Trinity is exposed in this understanding and the Jews and their traditions
are exposed by it. Islam is judged by it as the Koran states quite categorically
that Judah and Constantinopolitan Christianity (from 381 CE) are judged by the
Torah and the Gospels and that the Koran is commentary on that Scripture (see
Surah 5 The Table Spread). Not one of the three great false systems follows
the commands of God neither Judaism, nor Trinitarian Christianity nor Hadithic
Islam. Each one is corrupt.
The Churches of God have been penetrated by Judaisers and by Trinitarians such
that it is being destroyed by the false doctrines of Trinitarianism and US style
Charismatic Pentecostalism.
I have seen it occur in our system even that people influenced by false material
have even commenced talks contrary to Scripture based on material from these
unconverted and often hysterical sources. The principles are these. Read what
you like but have the intelligence and conversion to prove all things and do
not swallow stupidity and error and blasphemy from these sources.
The facts of history are clear. We know what the calendar was in the Temple
period. We know what the New Moons were and Philo tells us they were from conjunction
to conjunction. We keep the calendar that was kept in the Temple. Yet we have
people come to us who wish to try and divert us from the true calendar because
they have been influenced by the hysteroids and usually in the US Churches of
God.
Surely the Holy Spirit witnesses in you against these people. Surely after all
these years you can discern those who corrupt Scripture and slander the brethren.
I was in Canada some years ago at a Bible study where we addressed a number
of people on the fundamentals of our faith and fielded questions from members
of another group associated with the Church of God from a WCG offshoot.
The leader of the group in Canada said to me that they had listened to their
leader from the US give a sermon on the crossing of the Red Sea and the leader
said that before Moses raised his rod and arms a member of the tribe of Judah,
a Jew, had leapt in ahead and that was the cause of the Red Sea parting. Now
the members of the group saw that this was pure unscriptural nonsense and judaising
in the worst way and they had the sense to leave that man and that group.
I was informed that not long after a member of our organisation of very long
standing (and whom I know and love) started to repeat this story at a study
and was stopped by one of our coordinators. He was shown how unscriptural it
was. He had been listening to this material without checking the Scriptures
and was taken in by something so basic that even the members of the Judaisers
organisation were not fooled. We should not be fooled by these false doctrines.
We should not be taken in by every wind of doctrine. We are all at fault in
some way. Often we will hear something that sounds right at first but when we
check it is false and if repeated would compound an error. Sometimes we hang
on to error not understanding the error of what we do.
One of the problems we face is that the Churches of God in the end of the Twentieth
century were so corrupt and so riddled with respect of persons and error and
hypocrisy and self-righteousness that they had to be destroyed. I was asked
once many years ago if the Churches of God was the correct system for the Millennium.
I replied that if I thought for one minute the churches then in existence were
representative of the kingdom of God I would curse God and die. Only individuals
in those systems were called and chosen. What is important to remember is that
only individuals in the leadership of those organisations are called and chosen
and fewer than the brethren they led or lead. Unless our own righteousness exceeds
theirs we will not enter the kingdom of God.
One of our ministers who had been a minister in two Churches of God both WCG
and UCG and a founding member in his nation, said that he had been baptised
forty years and he was only now coming into the understanding of the faith and
the promised land.
I suggest that you study the paper Measuring the Temple and you will see where
we are at present. I am the most miserable of sinners and in need of God's Holy
Spirit and saving Grace. We all should be aware of our condition and turn to
God with all our hearts.
I saw an exchange between one of our coordinators in Southeast Asia and three
ministers from the Armstrong system who had turned to Trinitarianism not comprehending
what was happening in their calling and their judgment.
These ministers were deceived by the false doctrines brought into the WCG system
because they were not grounded in the faith. The doctrine on the nature of God
was not understood by them. However, in that failure they also failed to understand
what was happening with the Holy Spirit. They did not understand Grace. They
rightly perceived that we are not saved by our own works but by the Grace of
God. Thus we do not earn salvation. We are given salvation by the grace of God
being dead in our sins. This doctrine is fundamental to our calling. However,
The Grace of God brings us to salvation and repentance. What keeps us saved
is obedience to the Law as sin is transgression of the Law.
The antinomians, those who are lawless and the sons of disobedience, cling to
the first part of the formula and ignore the second part. They do not understand
because their minds are carnal and in enmity to the Law of God. They are saved
by grace but retain their salvation in obedience through the Holy Spirit. Thus
by failing to keep the Laws of God in obedience because they love God they come
under condemnation and die. The elect are those who keep the commandments of
God and the testimony or faith of Jesus Christ (Rev. 12:17; 14:12). The test
of a minister, or apostle or prophet is the same as it always was. If they do
not speak according to the Law and the Testimony there is no light in them (Isa.
8:20). Thus every apostle of God and Christ is judged according to the Law and
the Testimony. Muhammed is judged by the Torah and the Gospel, as he himself
said in The Table Spread. So are all the Hadithic scholars of Islam and all
the Jews who pervert the law in the Talmud and all the bishops and priests of
the Trinitarian and Binitarian or Ditheist system and so are we all of the Churches
of God. If someone says that the Law of God is done away or that Christ gave
us a new law and repealed the old law they show thereby they are liars and false
prophets. More importantly, they make Christ out a false prophet as he spoke
according to the Law and the Testimony or he was not, and could not be, the
Messiah. He himself said that not one jot or tittle shall pass from the Law
until Heaven and earth pass away and all is accomplished. Last time I looked
they (heaven and earth) were still there and the Messiah is not yet here. Both
the Bible and the Koran claim Jesus Christ is in command of the Judgment, as
Messiah, at his return. The Koran has been corrupted by Hadithic Islam to disguise
these facts. We are given the Holy Spirit so that we can keep the Law of God
and worship Him in spirit and in truth. That Spirit enables us to become sons
of God in power from the Resurrection from the Dead, as Christ did (Rom. 1:4).
It also enables us to grow in the knowledge and love of God while we live.
We can all grieve the Holy Spirit. We all sin. I sin often in word and in thought
and sometimes in deed. He who says he is without sin is a liar and the truth
of God is not in him.
We know that Pentecost is a reminder of the coming of the Holy Spirit. We know
it was kept on a Sunday in the Temple period and we know that the church has
always kept it on a Sunday except for a very short period in one of the Churches
of God in the Twentieth century in the transition from rabbinical Judaising
to the true timing of Pentecost.
We know that the Samaritans still keep it on a Sunday but they sometimes get
it wrong because of their commencement of the New Year. In another way the Trinitarians
get it wrong sometimes because of their manipulation of the pagan Easter system
rather than the true Passover. None of their errors excuses us from keeping
the faith correctly. Tomorrow is the second last Sabbath of the seven Sabbaths
to Pentecost. Remember your calling and why we are all called to the faith.
Remember that there is a sacrifice for sin and that was Jesus Christ. We are
to keep the Law as not to do so is to sacrifice Christ repeatedly. How can we
continue in sin and put Christ to the death, crucified again and again. Pray
for our strength and our salvation. Pray that all of us might be able to stand
before God. Pray that our garments are made white in the blood of the Lamb and
we are forgiven our sins. Pray we are all given the strength to do the jobs
we are called to do and that we can retain the understanding of the faith against
the cunning of the adversary.
Remember that the leaven in the two loaves at Pentecost are to remind us of
the power of the Holy Spirit in the two arms of the faith: In the branch and
the golden lampstands; in the two arms of prophecy; in the nation and the church;
and in both human and spiritual host.
Love one another. Pray for the redemption of the world and the fallen host.
Pray for those who despitefully use you and slander you for the sake of Christ.
Pray that God never leaves us or forsakes us as God promised us through His
servants the prophets.
May God bless and keep us this Sabbath and New Moon and on our trip to Pentecost
wherever we are.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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