Sabbath 12/5/26/120 (Part A)
Dear Friends,
This week saw us go though the 9th and 10th of Av or Ab. I had mentioned to you that Moses had returned from the mountain with the tablets and broke them. He had killed the three thousand unfaithful leaders and returned to the Lord to receive another set of tablets. The Jewish traditions make much of the 9th of Ab and say that many events took place on this day, which did not in fact take place. Some claim the spies came back and they rejected the Promised Land on this day, but Bullinger probably more correctly places this event in Elul and in fact he claims it is in the end of Elul (cf. Companion Bible fn. to Numbers 13:25). Solomon’s Temple fell to the Babylonians on this day in Av and some erroneously assume that the second Temple also fell on this day. It actually fell at Atonement in 70 CE and the temple at Heliopolis, or ancient Goshen, in Egypt was closed in early 71 CE by order of Emperor Vespasian. The temple in Egypt was the last continual place of sacrifice anywhere in the world for Judah.
The significance of the month of Ab was that it followed the worship of the false god Tammuz or Dumuzi in the Golden Calf (see the paper The Golden Calf (No. 222)) whose false worship is commemorated in the name for the month. The transition to Ab is actually the transition to the worship of the Father alone. That is why the New Moon of Ab is the time for repentance and change. From the New Moon to the ninth is the period of completion. The Tenth of Ab brings the cycle of change to a close. Many of those who do not change are removed by this date. Thus the Babylonians destroyed the temple of King Solomon because Judah did not repent. They were removed and the old temple was completely destroyed. It lay in ruins for well over a century and until the reign of Darius II when it was rebuilt from 419 BCE (see the paper The Sign of Jonah and the History of the Reconstruction of the Temple (No. 13)). Many Christian religious groups erroneously place the reconstruction in the reign of Darius I contrary to the biblical sequence in Ezra.
All these events were given to us as examples. God will send us the prophet Elijah in the last days before the Day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the son and the sons to the fathers, or God will strike the earth with a curse (Mal. 3:5-6).
We should all ask ourselves where were we at the New Moon of Ab? Have we changed our allegiances and have we been removed from the body of the Jesus Christ over this time from the end of Tammuz until the 10th of Ab. If we have, it is a clear indication that we are out of step and are being reprimanded and we had better repent and get back in step. To be severed from the body of Christ is not a small thing. God is dealing with His elect on a systematic basis. Some may well be brought back into the body from this time also after absences or in repentance.
The Temple is a spiritual edifice being built up of living stones. God will not allow it to be profaned and disrupted by deceit and poor ethics. His people are not chattels to be carted around from place to place by an aberrant ministry, as we have seen in the Churches of God over recent decades.
God works to His calendar. He does all things decently and in order. He tests and brings to repentance in due season. He raises trees and gives them time for growth and dunging and then He tests them for fruit. Sometimes the people who go to make up the temple do not bear fruit in due time and are placed further from the temple. In these analogies they are like stones that have to be worked and they need to be chipped and crafted so that they can be fitted into the Temple as it is erected. Some are placed away for a while to prevent the disruption of others.
The calendar is to be understood and kept. Without the New Moons we cannot understand what God is really doing in this sequence. The Jubilees are also critical to this sequence. That is why Jesus Christ stood in the synagogue and declared the Acceptable Year of the Lord. That is why he was baptised just before this event in 27 CE. This year was the Jubilee and the eightieth jubilee since the fall of Adam and the cursing of the earth.
God healed us in this sequence. Christ began the Church in this year from his baptism. He selected the apostles from this time and they began to baptise. He began to teach after the imprisonment of John the Baptist after the Passover of 28 CE. This commenced a new sequence of events in the calendar of God. The last forty jubilees were commenced and this sequence represented the Church in the wilderness. We are tested and tried. The entire world was opened up to salvation from this time. The gentiles could have turned and been saved but they would not obey God and so we had to spend forty jubilees or two thousand years in the wilderness, as Israel spent forty years in the wilderness, because they listened to the ten spies who betrayed them.
In this same way the Churches of God have been betrayed in the last days by an unethical ministry. The nations themselves are being destroyed though selfishness. It is worthwhile reflecting on the demographics of our nations. What is actually happening in the western world? Australia is currently undergoing a building boom, but what is actually behind it? What is happening to the families and the nation?
When I was young it was not unusual to live with one’s family. Often there were three generations in the one house, but this happened less and less as the so-called nuclear family began to be promoted. I have lived in an extended family for decades; both when I was young, and when my father died my mother came to live with us. Now that is highly unusual.
The demographics of our society are changing. People are extending their housing not because they are getting larger but because they are increasingly living alone. Men have always died younger than women and there have always been widows, but usually they have lived with the family. Our family research shows that has been so for generations. However, this century it has changed. Over the last hundred years the population of Australia has increased fivefold, but the housing numbers have increased tenfold. This is now accelerating as people increasingly live alone. Social bonding is going on now in classes, and courses, and clubs but not at home. The bonding is external and superficial. The hearts of the parents are not turned to the children and the children are increasingly turned from the parents, and these nations will suffer the consequences of their selfish actions.
I was fascinated to read an article not so long ago where an actor in Hollywood, who was quite famous and getting on in years, was reportedly kicked out of his son’s house by his daughter-in-law because his habits were that he left cigar butts in the ashtray, and newspapers on the sofa, and empty milk cartons in the fridge. He was wealthy enough and they were all wealthy enough to employ a maid, but they did not choose to do that. He was booted out. If that is an example of the tolerance levels of society, no wonder people now die alone in homes and their inheritance is squandered on trivialities or unnecessary expenses.
The reason the eldest son is given a double portion for an inheritance in Israel
under the law is so that he may care for his mother and others in old age. That
is why the land is not allowed to be sold and reverts at the jubilees. The costs
of housing are escalating way beyond the reach of the young because the society
is increasingly dysfunctional and intolerant, and the banks make usury into
a social weapon against the young and the poor and the needy.
Our society cannot continue as we are. The coming New World Order will not solve
the problem. It will make it worse and the society will reject it in the end.
The end days will be war and desolation because we do not care for our families
and we pursue selfish and silly goals.
This month of Ab is the month in which we should all turn to the Father in repentance and love. If we do not love our parents and our families whom we have seen, how can we love our father and our brothers whom we have not seen? It is in the pursuit of His law or instructions that we show that we are committed to Him. The period from the New Year at 1 Abib in the First Month to the Last Great Day of the Feasts in the Seventh Month is where we see the plan of God unfold and we see His long-term grace and mercy. These seven months are a sequence of events in the plan of salvation and we keep this sequence each year to remind us of God’s ongoing activity in the affair of mankind and for ourselves as individuals.
This week we saw the election of a homosexual bishop in the Episcopalian church in the USA. I watched as the bishops spoke in support and their countenance testified against them. Even those in opposition were weak. Was this an accident that it occurred over 9 and 10 Ab? I don’t think so. Was it an accident that this week also the Vatican was exposed as systematically covering up perverted criminal activity in the Roman Catholic Church? I don’t think so. God is about to deal with the world.
Remember that Satan and the Demons hate the whore and Satan gives his power to the beast in the last days to turn on and destroy the whore. The entire Trinitarian Church is the whore of the last days that has committed fornication with the kings of the earth. Slowly this system will implode on its own iniquity. The end result will see the beast of the governing system simply legislate to control these churches and eventually to destroy them. The churches have been beset by iniquity for centuries. The monasteries and nunneries have already been closed by legislation over the last few centuries both in UK and in Europe, and in the Americas. It is necessary because there are no ethics and no conscience and no obedience to the Laws of the Father.
Satan set all the seeds of the destruction long ago. He uses the sins and weakness of us all against us because we are weak and he is the accuser of the brethren.
What satisfaction could a rational mind derive from influencing people to commit sins and turn them from truth and light into error that will harm them? One would think it would bring remorse and shame to anyone with any sound process of reasoning: apparently not so with our adversary. We should also pray for the repentance of the demons. Christ gave us the prophecy of the repentance of Satan when he issued the story of the prodigal son. In that story Christ actually denigrated himself so as to elevate the power and mercy and goodness of the Father. This story is explained in the paper Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son (No. 199).
The love of our people is to be encouraged by our love for one another in the families. So also the Church is a family. We are to care for one another there also.
We should all be concerned with the ethics of our conduct and that of the Church. We should also be concerned with the development of the family and the Church and the nation. A nation cannot grow without sound families. A church cannot grow without sound families either. The family is the building block of the nation, and the Church is a body of leadership on ethical principles and should be based on the Laws of God.
I have been observing all manner of unethical conduct among the ministries of the Churches of God over recent times. Paul said mark those who cause division, yet we see ministers treat people like chattels and deceive them in order to develop groups that increase their influence or following. If a minister does not receive the influence they think they deserve, they seem to think nothing of working against the organisation they are in, in order to increase their influence with another organisation or to start their own. I have seen churches split in two with this conduct everywhere. The worst examples for this behaviour of recent times seems to be the paid ministry of the Worldwide Church of God and their offshoots. They seem to wreak havoc wherever they go.
I have also noticed another unethical process occur among these same people. That practice is plagiarism and false arguments created using “straw men”. Many of their ministry simply plagiarise ideas and systems from us without due credit. In plagiarism it is not simply a word for word lifting that is the theft. It is the improper accreditation for ideas that have been used when there is a work extant that has been done beforehand, which has important research. Many of that ministry have not been exposed to academic rigour so as to seem not to understand what it is they do that is wrong. It was once explained to me at university in the faculty of law, that one can plagiarise even when correct citations and accreditation are given on each occasion. Failing to cite other authentic relevant papers is scandalous.
I noticed one minister over the years gradually fudge his position on the Calendar using our material so as to shift around and adopt our works, but make a mess of it because he did not properly understand the research. Another church in the USA uses him as a straw man to publish incorrect details in refutation of him, knowing that the original sources and correct arguments are on CCG websites, but not wishing to draw attention to them. It appears that is done so their arguments will not be seen to be false or have people study more authentic research. Now all that behaviour is unethical. However, this organisation also published a work on the Passover some years back that joined some verses of the Bible together and deleted a section making the verses say the opposite of what they actually said. Unethical? Indeed yes, but they still had simpletons following them after even that effort.
I have also seen the same people and other people in the offshoots of the WCG write false works on the Godhead ignoring the history of the doctrinal debates, so as to assert that the Churches of God were not Unitarian and that Herbert Armstrong was merely following the doctrines of the early Church. Now that assertion is an absolute lie and anyone with any theological knowledge would understand that fact. Herbert Armstrong, himself espousing and being credentialed by a Unitarian church introduced the Ditheist heresy to the Churches of God and he should have been reprimanded for it. However, his apologists try to claim that the Unitarian structure is a new doctrine. The same type of dishonest scholarship has been used by Trinitarians for centuries and there is no difference between the presentations of the Armstrongite ministry and the Trinitarian church in the manner if not the fact of their argument. However, the Trinitarians would try to confine the Unitarian argument to the Council of Nicea in 325 CE and try to assert its origin with Arius. The fact was that Lucian of Antioch, who also taught Eusebius and a host of other bishops as well as Asterius the Sophist and many others, taught Arius the doctrines. Lucian was the greatest of the theological teachers at the end of the third century. The Trinitarians could not make reference to him because it would draw attention to a much older history and take the trail back to the early church, which is what they wished to avoid.
The history and origins of the doctrines are explained in detail in the papers The Development of the Neo Platonist Model (No. 17); The Original Doctrines of the Christian Faith (No: 88); Early Theology of the Godhead (No. 127); Consubstantial with the Father (No. 81); Arianism and Semi-Arianism (No. 167); and Socinianism, Arianism and Unitarianism (No. 185).
There is no excuse for ignorance in the matter. The misrepresentation is inexcusable and unethical. It is aimed at deceiving congregations and disrupting the proper education and function of the Churches of God. What is most fascinating is that the people of the Armstrong/WCG system seem to want to be deceived and seem to want to believe these lies. Such ministers are certainly unethical in what they do, but they are able to do it because of the feeble nature of the congregations and their failure to be convicted by truth.
God has given us a plan and a set of instructions and access to the Holy Spirit so that by obedience we can understand and be saved. He has given us the fruits of the spirit so that we may assist one another.
We should study so that we are not deceived by these arguments. This month of Ab is often the end of a test to see if we are awake or not.
More importantly, we should be looking to the family and the Church and the nation, for as goes the family so also goes the Church and the nation. If you are not close to your family you will drift from the Church, and the nation will also suffer.
How you look after your family will stand as an example to the young and the nation will prosper. We all have a responsibility to build for our posterity and we should all be together in love and harmony.
Remember, the hearts of the parents should be turned to the children and the children to the parents, or God will smite the earth with a curse.
The Church stands as the rule of thumb for this prophecy.
Love one another. If we do not love the family we can see, how can we love
the family we cannot see?
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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