Sabbath Message

Sabbath Message by Wade Cox

Sabbath 29/8/26/120 and New Moon 1/9/26/120

Dear Friends,

As we have all known for many years the shakedown of the Churches of God is still under way and the First Great Commandment remains the true test of the faith (see the paper The First Great Commandment (No. 252)). The dedicated Christian places this First Great Commandment above all else and the Second Great Commandment is like it and follows it (see the paper The Second Great Commandment (No. 257)). On these two Commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets (see the series The Law of God (L1)).

There is a sense of complacency among the Churches of God that adopted the Armstrong doctrine of the Two True Gods. Those such as the Living Church of God and the Philadelphia Church of God thought they had simply to claim the late Armstrong heresy and they would be able to continue on unscathed and pick up the remains of the WCG carcase as it slowly decomposed in its errors.

Christian Churches of God is founded on the original doctrine of the Church of God founded two thousand years ago. That doctrine proclaims that there is ONE TRUE GOD and that He sent Jesus Christ and that eternal life is in knowing Him and Jesus Christ whom HE sent (cf. Jn 17:3).

One would say: “What’s so hard about that? What is so difficult to understand in that process?” Well, the fact is that the Churches of God did not put God first and they did not get it right. They tried to appeal to the US Trinitarianism in the numbers game and they paid and are paying the penalty for that heresy.

Contrary to what Napoleon, and Lenin, and Stalin, and Hitler advocated, God is not on the side of the big battalions. If God were interested in numbers, the head of God’s Church would have an army and those who opposed Him would all be dead. Many of us were exterminated when the pope, for example, did have an army. Our history has not been an easy one to live or even to read. Look at the Sabbath-keeping Churches of God and see when they lived, where they lived, and what was so special about them, and in fact what role the Sabbath played in their daily life and doctrines. The historical doctrines are contained in the paper The Role of the Fourth Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170). The various Sabbath systems are contained in the paper General Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122). As will become obvious, not all Sabbath-keeping churches are Churches of God. The Sabbath is only one of the Commandments and only one of the identifying signs of the Church.

In 1995 we watched the United Church of God, an international association (UCG aia) form from the remains of the ministry of the WCG. They did not care nor even dare to formulate a doctrine on the nature of God. They attracted many of the ex WCG attendees. “Members” is not the correct word for the laity, as they are in effect reduced to a client status and have no membership rights in either the unlawfully constituted WCG system, post the Armstrong referendum fraud, nor in the UCG aia system which is really comprised of a body of ministers who alone have voting rights and ownership. They further split in two with the arguments over presidential controlled funds and the COH Monrovia formed. Once again, no doctrinal discussion or pronouncements were made in either body of any significance.

That Church all over the world was divided at that time, not on doctrine but on arguments about power and money. The Bible says that we are to mark those who cause division in the Church. If the division is caused over doctrine then that is done to show who has the approval of God (1 Cor. 11:19). No one is to be contentious, as we have no such custom in the Churches of God. However, if there is no argument about doctrine, what business is there in any man dividing the body of Christ? These are they who cause division and are to be marked. They are not ministers of God but wolves who rend the sheep.

In the near future we will see the division yet again of the UCG aia, but this time it will be on doctrinal grounds over the nature of God. Why would that be so? The answer is that the problem was never resolved from the beginning.

When UCG aia formed, the conglomerate of the WCG system that was not prepared to go along with the open Trinitarian approach of the WCG leadership was carefully rounded up. They were formed into a group but legally excluded from the church. The reorganisation was primarily aimed at keeping the tithe-paying membership in tact to safeguard the ministerial income, rather than resolving the doctrinal mess Herbert Armstrong’s theological incompetence had left the Churches of God.

In this cauldron of theological error in which the Church found itself in the second half of the twentieth century, a number of schools had formed in the WCG, and also in offshoots of it, and in the parent bodies such as the Church of God (Seventh Day). The various conferences of those churches, as late as 1995, declared their doctrinal position as Binitarian or Ditheist. The agenda seems to be to slide towards Trinitarian orthodoxy as quietly as possible, or as quietly as their sleepy congregations will allow.

Up until 1942 the Churches of God were all classical Unitarian and clearly non-Trinitarian. Even the Seventh Day Adventists were clearly Unitarian, regarding Trinitarianism as an heretical error up until the death of Uriah Smith in 1932. They did not fully espouse Trinitarianism until 1978.

In all the Unitarian systems, Christ was regarded as being the Great Angel of the Law that spoke with Moses at Mt Sinai and gave the Law to him appearing as the Glory of God. He was speaking for and on behalf of God to Israel, whom he had chosen to form as the nucleus of his priesthood and the vehicle of his calling and salvation of mankind. This view was the view of the entire Christian Church even the Church at Rome until the end of the second century CE. The doctrines are covered in the paper The Original Doctrines of the Christian Faith (No. 88).

It is important that we understand what we believe, and what we have always believed, so that we can give an account of the hope that lies within us. There are no second prizes for near misses in this vital knowledge of the One True God.

So what is the problem now in UCG aia and where will it lead? The problem is that because their theology has been so ill defined they have allowed, and deliberately so, at least three erroneous theologies to co-exist.

The errors are clearly in these three categories. They are Trinitarianism, Binitarianism/Ditheism and Radical Unitarianism. All of these differ from the classical biblical Unitarian theology and are heresies within the Churches of God.

Some are clear Trinitarians, posing as ministers of the Churches of God. In fact, I asked one the other day and he admitted quite openly that he considers the Trinity as the best theological explanation. He, at the same time, says he is very distinct from mainstream theology. Now, that is nonsense and anyone with any knowledge of mainstream theology knows that is the fundamental prerequisite for admission to the mainstream. You can virtually believe whatever you like alongside that marker doctrine.

Josephus tells us that it was precisely on this doctrine that the reorganisation after the flood under Nimrod was formed. He tells us this important fact regarding Babylon:

“The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon; because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, Confusion. The Sybil also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus:- “When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone his peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon.’ But as to the plains of Shinar in the country of Babylonia, Hestiaeus mentions it, when he says thus:- “Such of the Priests as were saved, took the sacred vessels of Jupiter Enyalius, and came to Shinar of Babylonia.’ ” (A. of J. Bk. 1, Ch. IV, Whiston Tr. Kregel, p. 30 ).

Thus it is clear in the minds of the ancients that the worship of the Triune God, here termed Jupiter Enyalius, was critical in the worship at Babylon and the system established from there.

Let no one be in doubt among us. The worship of the Trinity is the fundamental identification of the Sun system and the Mystery Cults. The Cult of Jupiter was centred on the Sacred Oak of Jupiter, which represented the Genii or collective male reproductive capacity of the state, and the female Juno, which represented the collective Junones or collective female reproductive capacity of the state. The third aspect was the Minerva, which came from the Middle East with the founders of the Etruscan and later Roman state after the fall of Troy. This aspect of the Minerva represents the third spiritual aspect of Satan as the Spirit of the Triune God. This Minerva has a female aspect to it and appears also as the Mother Goddess.

The theology behind the Bible story is explained in the paper The Doctrine of Original Sin Part 1: The Garden of Eden (No. 246).

The entire Roman system was based on the Triune God within the cult of Jupiter and in the Middle Eastern subsidiaries of the gods Attis, which extended in the west, Adonis among the Greeks, and Osiris among the Egyptians. The Orphic and Bacchic rites also were associated with the cults. This cult was endemic among the Gomerite and Magogite Celts of the Hittite Alliance and found its way into Rome and Europe with their descendents.

Now, it is easy to recognise this demonic system for what it is. The theology of the god Attis in its crucified structure, or of Adonis, is simply this:

The God is expressed as two distinct parts of the one God, as Father and Son. The aspect of the God that was “Father” remained in heaven. The secondary aspect of “son” came down to earth and was crucified on a Friday, descended into hell, and was redeemed by the goddess being resurrected on Sunday. The names and structure vary among the sub sects of Attis and Adonis and the Mysteries, but they nevertheless have the similar theology. The God is the same one modal structure in two distinct elements. Now, this should be fairly familiar to anyone who has spoken with or studied the Trinitarians and their Binitarian cohorts. Even when the Ditheists are cornered as to how God is one, they will revert to the Modal structure. The Ditheist argument is truly heretical and bizarre. The argument runs, and I have seen it so expressed in WCG publications and by their evangelists, that there were two gods that existed before time began and they were coeternal. The two coeternal gods allegedly had a discussion as to who would come down and be sacrificed. One decided to come down and that being we know as Christ. The other remained in heaven and he became the father of the other, who was Christ. Now many of these simpletons gulp down this blasphemy and they do not understand from where it comes.

What philosophical meaning can the terms father and son have in this context? If there were two coeternal gods then we have TWO TRUE GODS, but the Bible says that there is only ONE TRUE GOD and He sent Jesus Christ, and this understanding is critical to the faith (Jn 17:3). Now, if your children came up with a maths equation that said that two true entities are really only one true entity, we would fail them. In one sense, we say that man and woman are one flesh as husband and wife, but under no circumstances would we assume they were one being without individuation. Father and Son are sequential in existence. One is a product of the other. That is fundamental in the understanding of the terms father and son within language and, in fact, any language on the planet used of humans. It is only within the terms used by the priest system of the Triune god that we see this confusion and modal structure advanced as a rational explanation, but explained as a mystery because it is inexplicable within any sense of language. Philosophically it is absurd.

Now there is another version of this fantasy running around the Churches of God from the end of the Twentieth Century. It actually originated from the disputes that arose in the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century when the radical Unitarians of the school of Faustus Socinius, or the Socinians, came into contact with the Eastern Waldensians who were classical Unitarians. These Unitarians were often termed Arians by the Trinitarians to disparage the correct and ancient theology of the classical Unitarians, who believed in the Pre-existence of Christ (see the paper The Pre-Existence of Jesus Christ (No. 243)). The problem is that the Trinitarians have misreported the theological discussion to such an extent it is difficult to properly identify the errors. The Jews have contributed to the error in their reporting of it also (see Kohn, The Sabbatarians in Transylvania, CCG Publishing, 1998, Cox ed.) The variations have been examined also in the paper Socinianism, Arianism, and Unitarianism (No. 185).

Now the theological problem within the Churches of God, which is termed radical Unitarianism, denies the pre-existence of Christ and claims that Christ had no pre-existence before his conception in Mariam’s womb other than as an idea in the mind of God. This theology is a quasi Trinitarian one and, in effect, says that there was one God who was eternal, and a spiritual element of him was detached and came down and took human form as Jesus Christ. After that element died, it was resurrected and assumed immortality as part of the one God. Sound familiar? It ought to. It is the same doctrine as we find in Attis and the Modal structure, to which was added the Holy Spirit as the third element of the Trinity. Strange, but these people claim that it is not Trinitarian. Well, it is properly modal and the resurrection of Christ makes it Binitarian in a post resurrection sense, but always Binitarian in the sense that both elements were in the One God.

The group in UCG aia that espouses this view among its ministry is not small and there will be a forced division among them over this issue. The problem is that not all may declare their hand. There is an aggregated group that espouses this error and their medium of publication is the Journal: News of the Churches of God Newspaper ,whose editor is a radical Unitarian and who has a publication bias to that doctrine. With the ministers of UCG aia who are part of that doctrinal group, we find the Church of God (General Conference) under Sir Anthony Buzzard, Charles Hunting and other groups.

This view is not correct, nor is it ancient, nor is it a traditional Church of God doctrine. It denies basic Bible doctrines and Scripture. For example, the Bible says clearly that all Israel was baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and ate the same spiritual meat and drank the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ (1Cor. 10:2-4). There are a multitude of Scriptures that show without doubt that Christ must have had pre-existence, but these people do not seem to understand.

The real problem is that other interest groups have penetrated the Churches of God also. These groups are intent on the destruction of the Churches of God and use any doctrinal means possible that will break it up. The Armstrong Ditheists simply don’t know enough to do any better among its lesser-educated ministry and they contribute to the theological chaos.

Where do we go from here?

Next week you will see an increase in the debate over the nature of God and the formulation of more splinter groups that are radical Unitarian, Binitarian/Ditheist or Trinitarian.

This time, don’t just go along like a dummy with those who would steer you into a corner, and usually their corner.

Use this opportunity to identify the true doctrine of the One True God and Jesus Christ whom He sent. This is eternal life that you understand those doctrines. Don’t make a mistake this time. The choice is yours and yours alone. Choose life.

It is vital you understand what Christ did before he was a man, and what he achieved by becoming a man. Although he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God to be something to be grasped after, but he made himself of no reputation. He took on himself the form of a servant and was made into the likeness of men, and being found in the form of a man humbled himself and became obedient unto death even death on the cross (Phil 2:5-8). How can he not have had pre-existence and fulfil this Scripture? How can he have been with the patriarchs and taken Israel out of Egypt and not have pre-existence? How can he have been before John the Baptist when John was six months older than Christ? The Messiah came into the world and that only born God being in the bosom of the father, spoke (Jn. 1:1-18).

The salvation process concerns all creation and he who sanctifies and they who are sanctified are of one origin (Heb. 2:11). Your destiny is to become Elohim (see the paper The Elect as Elohim (No. 001)). God is concerned with the children of Abraham (see www.abrahams-legacy.org), but he is also working the salvation of all mankind and the Heavenly Host, both loyal and rebellious.

The Churches of God will continue to be broken down until they get it right and then we can rebuild on the solid foundation of the faith once delivered to the saints. Hebert Armstrong’s errors are not going to be allowed to contaminate the Churches of God into the Millennium. As long as you fail and grasp error, the groups will be broken down again.

For further reading refer to the papers Frequently Asked Questions Series 1: The Nature of God (No. 3); Catholicism Frequently Asked Questions (No. 8); The Development of the Neo-Platonist Model (No. 17); Binitarianism and Trinitarianism (No. 76); Consubstantial with the Father (No. 81); Heresy in the Apostolic Church (No. 89); Early Theology of the Godhead (No. 127); Arianism and Semi-Arianism (No. 167); and Introduction to the Godhead (No. 193)

Wade Cox

Coordinator General