Sabbath 27/9/26/120
Dear Friends,
The Sabbath is now almost onto the Pagan Christmas system forbidden by the Bible
at Jeremiah chapter 10:2-5.
This week ahead is the most corrupt and pretentious of the worlds systems. Some years ago now a newspaper editor of an Australian paper asked me to write a paper explaining the origins of Christmas and Easter. I did that and the result was the paper The Origins of Christmas and Easter (No. 235). Since that time many churches of the word have distributed it and it has had a marked effect on the way many people think. Each year over these months thousands upon thousands of the papers are downloaded and studied. Slowly we will have an influence on the way people think.
However, there are still millions upon millions keeping Christmas and it preoccupies the thinking and the expectations of untold millions of poor people. They are deceived by their churches and the commercial system into believing that it is somehow expected of them that they put themselves into debt by thousands of dollars so that they can say they did not neglect their children in giving them what are, by and large, useless gifts. They are afraid that they might be accused of not indulging the whims and fancies of a material generation. So they encourage the next generation in the stream of lies and commercialism that this festival has come to exemplify.
I notice that some nations have parades each year of people dressed in red suits with white beards and they have come to associate the figure with the commercial aspirations of the economic system. This is exactly what God said of Lucifer in his corruption. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence and thou hast sinned: Therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire (Ezek. 28:15-16).
The commercialism of the world is the product of Satan, who was removed from the mountain of God. Christ relaced Satan as the Lucifer, the Morning Star or Day Star, because of Satan’s iniquity (see the paper Lucifer, Light Bearer and Morning Star (No. 223)).
The corruption of the faith was achieved not by Christmas but by Easter, which was the primary festival introduced in the second century from the sun cults with Sunday worship. Easter was introduced through the bishop of Rome. The Church at Rome and its leadership was the first office of the Church of God to be corrupted. That office is not the leader of the Christian system but rather the leader of the false and apostate system that poses as Christianity. Christmas was introduced in the sixth century to further consolidate the pagans and the worshippers of the Mother Goddess system.
It is supported by the world’s systems because of their commercial aspirations and not for any other reason.
People are the same the world over. They do not look to the origins of things and what it is they do in worship.
Ask yourself this question. If God has forbidden a practice, how can we believe we honour him by still doing it and calling it something else?
One of the fascinating things I saw in the Churches of God was the collapse of a system that was built on brainwashing. The WCG was the most profoundly mind controlled organisation that we have seen in the Churches of God. Others exist of course outside of it and many had their origins within it and were corrupted and sidetracked, as was WCG. We have seen many thousands of people who left Trinitarianism and indeed saw it as the false system of worship of the world. Yet when exposed to the mind control of the WCG system they were simply unable to identify what it was they had seen initially and what it was that called them into the Churches of God. They simply collapsed when told it was all right to work on the Sabbath, to go to services on Sundays, to keep Christmas and Easter, and ignore the Passover, Tabernacles and the other festivals of God.
I know people who worked on Sundays for years and took Sabbath off. A car salesman I know worked that way for twenty odd years. He was baptised into WCG as a young man. Yet when he was told that the WCG had abandoned the Sabbath system, he went to work on the Sabbaths as though it had no meaning at all. In fact, he turned on those who actually refused to accept the changes in the WCG system and that had been friends with him over the same period of time.
We have also seen and had members of the CCG, who joined us from WCG at its break-up, who were unable to find the stability of mind to identify the foundations of the faith to the extent that when they went to work on Sabbaths and were not rebuked openly but rewarded for doing so, they took that as an indifference by God to what they were doing. Needless to say, they are no longer with us and in fact do nothing and probably believe nothing. Who do you think it is that blesses you for disobeying God? Will not the adversary bless you for worshipping him? Did he not promise Christ rulership of the earth if Christ would simply worship him? How did he have that power? Christ did not challenge his power to do that but rather Christ challenged his right to do so in place of God. Christ said: Begone Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’ (Mat. 4:10).
So, who is it that we worship and serve? We worship and serve the One True God and we do it through the Body of Christ under whom we are placed. That body is the Church of God. We worship God within the calendar we were given at Sinai and in accordance with the instructions of the Law of God and the Testimony of Christ and the prophets. It is not a hard problem to understand. How is it that so many get it wrong? The answer is that they do it for power and influence and make twists in the faith to isolate the weak and gullible who were called into the faith, but are not clear thinking and may well not be the chosen of God. Many are misled by wolves who make merchandise of the brethren.
We have seen leaders of some Churches of God deliberately corrupt the Scriptures to make the Bible say the opposite of what it actually does say. For example, to try and justify their and the WCG doctrine of the Passover being on 14 Nisan, instead of the 14th being the preparation day and the day of the Lord’s Supper before the night of the Passover meal on 15 Nisan, they removed a section of a verse and then combined the verses together to make the text say the opposite of what it did say. An example is contained in the text The Passover (No. 98).
Recently another farrago of false information regarding the calendar was produced. It was claimed that the postponement system was in operation during the Temple period. Now anyone who has read the Mishna and Philo knows with absolute certainty that the postponements were not even properly into effect when the Mishna was compiled ca 200 AD or CE. Philo says quite clearly that the month was from one New Moon to the other, which was determined by the conjunction and which was calculated in the astronomical schools. The quotation is found in the paper Commentary on the UCG Doctrinal Paper Should Christians Observe New Moons (No. 124), and see also Commentary on the UCG Doctrinal Statement on the Calendar (No. 206).
Often these people do not realise the logical consequence of what they say. For example, the preposterous claim regarding the postponements in the Temple system was made in order to justify the postponements in the Hillel Calendar. Now, this is obviously and manifestly untrue but the author obviously also did not understand the consequences of the claim. By alleging that the postponements were in place in the Temple period and therefore at the time of Christ he was alleging that the rules formed for the later postponements, and which did not come fully into effect until a thousand years after Christ, were operating at the crucifixion and therefore the crucifixion could not have been on a Wednesday in 30 CE. According to the postponement system, the preparation day of 14 Nisan must have been on a Friday. This false assertion destroyed the work of a colleague on the crucifixion. The colleague’s earlier work was aimed at proving the Crucifixion was on a Wednesday and so the writer constructed a book aimed at proving the crucifixion was on Wednesday 25 April 31 CE. That claim was absolute nonsense as the Passover had never been that late for a thousand years before Christ. However, WCG had constructed that view based on ignorance. He allegedly corrected that later, by a paper, to Wed. 5 April 30 CE, which was a valid conclusion. So the later work, if correct, would destroy that premise. Of course, it is false but the writers seem not to comprehend the ramifications of what they say. Their failure to come to grips with fact, and their capacity to make broad and untrue statements without understanding the consequence of what they say, makes a joke of their work as was the case with their cut and splice of the Passover texts we referred to above.
It is a matter of fact that if the postponements were in place in 30 CE, then the Crucifixion would have been on a Friday. Under the Dehiyyot or Postponements of the Hillel system, 14 Nisan must fall on Friday 7 April 30 CE. Thus, their previous work was completely erroneous. However, the fact is that the crucifixion was on Wednesday, 5 April 30 CE, and not only were the postponements not in force, they had not been and would not even be determined for another three hundred and fourteen years.
It is through unscholarly material regarding the calendar, such as the grinding
error through misuse of CCG material, by untrained people, that has created
straw men for each other to oppose and destroy. The same problem has been evident
for centuries. The Church has been undermined by dishonesty and greed for two
millennia. The poor explanations of the system and the slow unacknowledged adoption
of CCG material, without proper citation or accreditation, has enabled people
to address those points and make sweeping false claims. That intellectual crime
would be punished severely in any university or academic organisation but goes
without comment among the gullible.
Now, if this form of corruption is found in the so-called Churches of God, should
we be surprised that it is endemic among the churches that are of the sun system?
In other words, the Sunday worshipping churches often believe and teach the
most amazing rubbish because they had to suspend belief in the Bible texts in
the beginning to get people to keep Sunday, and then Easter, and finally Christmas.
Nothing they do, and no day they worship on, is of God. Thus, they twist scripture
and are conditioned to misread scripture.
However, we might ask how did the sun system take over Christianity? We find that it was in the adoption of false and paganised systems in the church by groups, and particularly the church at Rome that enabled the false system to be established. False worship corrupts the Church of God because people allow it to be preached and they swallow fiction without blinking. There is a psychology to religious groups that is well developed and understood. The Trinitarian system used force to establish itself and maintained itself by force and power. In the smaller groups, the use of propaganda and the development of cult systems enshrine a leader. The use of brainwashing techniques suspend critical judgment in these groups and the hysterical and accusative nature of the sermons, combined with the forum in which they are delivered, suspend critical brainwave functions and condition the brains of the receptive. People are unwilling to admit error and often seize on any argument, and usually false, to justify their error.
CCG has had people who sometimes listen to these men on tapes and then come and repeat the false statements among us, rather than do proper research. Usually it is exposed when someone puts it to the test against the Bible text. Once it becomes a habit to listen to them on a regular basis, the hysteria and accusation is built up in the thinking. Self-righteous condemnation of others follows in quick succession. When dealing with these problems, my question is most often: “How can the Holy Spirit allow them to sit there and listen to this accusative nonsense?” The answer is that they have suspended judgment and they are in grave danger of quenching the Holy Spirit.
If you keep pagan holydays and worship under false calendars, such as the Jewish
Hillel system, then you will fall from understanding and the faith. If you keep
Christmas and Easter you will sin and profane the understanding of the word
of God. The One True God has told us through the prophet Jeremiah:
Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen and be not dismayed at
the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of
the people are vain: for one cuts a tree out of the forest, the work of the
hands of the workman with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they
fasten it with nails and with hammers so it does not move. They are upright
as the palm tree but do not speak; they have to be carried because they cannot
go anywhere. Be not afraid of them because they cannot do evil and neither is
it in them to do good (Jer. 10:2-5).
This text was written many centuries before the birth of Christ. How often
does God have to tell man what he is to do and what he is not to do? Surely
it is enough for God to say it and have it written once. God requires obedience
more that sacrifice. Do not be carried away by falsehood and paganism. Look
to God and stand in awe.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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