Sabbath 19/10/26/120
Dear Friends,
This week I considered it appropriate to address the issue of the calling to the faith. In this examination I would like us all to consider the issues of loyalty and service. We are all called into the faith at the opportune time for us to be dealt with in order and sequence. Many people are not called in this lifetime but must wait until the Second Resurrection. Those of us who are called now have responsibilities to the work. Being called to the faith is not being given a warm fuzzy feeling every Sabbath when you attend services or when you wish to attend services, in some cases which is often when one gets a rush of inspiration after the Friday night news on some weeks.
We often have people contact us and demand to attend services and then get most disgruntled when we request that they study the Statement of Beliefs and the Constitution, and agree to abide by both sets of documents and sign to that effect. Often many people join us and work faithfully and well. Many do whatever is asked of them cheerfully and often they perform when seeing a need without being asked. God rewards them and sees what they do. They store up much treasure in heaven.
Think about the example of the Apostles. All except John were martyred. They went where they were sent. They did not complain. Only one of the early Church officers ran away but he returned to the work and, even though he lost the confidence of Paul, he worked as well as he could from then onwards. How many of us can speak as Paul did? He writes in 2Corinthians 11:21-12:15:
But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?
30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. 32 At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, 33 but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.12 I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. 3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— 4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. 5 On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. 6 Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. 7 So to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
11 I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing. 12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works. 13 For in what were you less favored than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!
14 Here for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. 15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? (English Standard Version).
So, are we to forsake our obligations in the faith because we are asked to perform
deeds that could not be more onerous than that we have seen already performed?
Do we not realise that we have a faith that has endured for millennia? Our Church
was formed under Christ. Our teachers were the patriarchs and the prophets.
Moses was taught by Christ and served for eighty years. He served forty years
in the teaching and forty years in the wilderness and still did not enter the
Promised Land. I am asked to travel vast distances in foreign lands and place
my life at risk. Yet people sometimes refuse to go where they are asked even
though we would bear their costs. The problem occurs because many people think
of themselves as being more important than they are and do not think of the
welfare of the faith. We have had many people come to us and say they agree
with what we teach and wish to commune with us but, when questioned, they do
not really agree at all. Often they simply wish to disrupt or to attract others
away.
If you are asked to give your answer and your agreement then let your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” be “no.” If you do not agree with us then there must be a church out there that agrees with you, or you must be wrong. Christ has never stopped working. The Church has been extant for two millennia. The gates of death have never prevailed against it. When one Church has been undermined and almost destroyed, it starts again with the provable doctrines of the faith. The Church has kept those doctrines for centuries. When it deviates, as it did last century, it is destroyed and started again. If you get a rush of blood to the head and think that, for example, the Calendar is wrong, ask yourself, “Is anyone doing or has anyone in the church done what you are doing?” The Temple worked to the same calendar as Moses did from the Exodus. There were no postponements and the Calendar worked on the Conjunctions from the beginning. Attacks on the Calendar are not new. The Babylonians tried to corrupt the faith from the beginning with the crescent moon. The secular traditionalists tried to introduce a fanciful calendar in the second century BCE through the book of Jubilees and the Temple priesthood rejected them. The system ended up in Qumran as a group of dysfunctional aesthetics, and their aberrant behaviour died with them. Christ and the apostles and the Church have kept the same calendar for centuries and millennia. The paper The Role of the Fourth Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170) deals with the historical Church and its views. Why is it so difficult for a group of people to agree on the faith once delivered and then work for it? We have no difficulty and we expect people to join us if they agree, or go elsewhere if they don’t. There is a set procedure for orderly correction of doctrine and systems and we expect it to be followed by a loyal functional Church that can work together as a team. If you are not a team player, there is a problem with you and not with the other person.
If you are on your own and there are no others who agree with you, then you have got it wrong or have not yet found the Church of God. You have an obligation to find the Church and work for it. The Bible tells us that it must be out there, no matter how small and persecuted. If you wish to serve, then do as you are asked within whatever organisation you consider correct or act within. If you think an organisation is wrong, then get out of it, and don’t be disloyal and work against it. Work diligently and obediently for the faith. You should be able to be sent to the ends of the earth and do the job you were sent to do. You should do it faithfully and honestly. If an apostle of God, nominated by the faith, asks you to go and do something then treat them in all humility. Obey them as you would a commander of the army of God. Do not mistake their humility for weakness, nor their generosity or silence for foolishness.
I have recently written about the people in Africa and India. We have seen many groups in Africa and India seek to approach us for money and not to establish the work of God. Each nation must work from its own tithes. If help is given through the World Conference then so much the better but if it is not offered, does that give anyone the right to abuse those who do not agree to fund every project dreamed up in every developing nation?
Our people are looking forward to the coming of the Messiah and it is not far away.
There is much to do and little time to do it.
Today the Anglican Primate of Australia announced his retirement next year. He also said that the Anglican Church has to change its views in a rapidly changing society. Why should that be so? He also said that he did not think that the Anglican Church would split. How can a body be united and walk together and not be agreed. He thinks that homosexuality has to be accommodated and that the Anglican Church will adapt to accommodate the custom. The Anglican Communion was formed out of a revulsion against the corruption and perversion of a European Church that ruled the nations within it. The confessions of the Anglican faith speak of the Law of God, and the requirement to keep the Law of God being separate to the ceremonial law. The confessions are listed in the paper Distinction in the Law (No. 96). Perhaps the archbishop should read what it was his faith was founded on during the Reformation. There is no doubt that a split in the Anglican communion is going to occur, and there is no doubt that the Roman Catholics are posing as angels of light in order to attract the schismatics. Both systems will die in the end.
The ministry of the various Protestant faiths speak as though there is no real God acting to control the affairs of men. They think that because society changes from one aberration to the next, that God will not act to deal with the nations. Many of these bishops do not even believe in God or that He spoke to us through His servants the prophets. I attended a conference with a professor of theology from South Africa who did not believe that the Bible was inspired, or even written within centuries of when it purported to be written, or by whom it says were the authors. He gave the work no credence as an inspired or even contemporary work. He and his assistant lecturer at the university, and others of like mind with him, were simply stunned when I informed them of the finds at Elephantine of the Aramaic letters by Ginsberg. They show that the people mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah were real people extant in the fifth century BCE, and to whom the authorities in Elephantine wrote and sent funds for the Temple restoration. Now, these letters are in Pritchard’s work The Ancient and Near East, Vol 1 published by Princeton University Press. The book was on the shelves when I was at university, and has been on the curriculum for Religious Studies and Ancient History for thirty years. These academics had never read them in the light of comparing them with the Bible text to see if what was written is so. They just assumed that their pet theory had validity, and they spend their time trying to prove the Bible to be irrelevant and a text written in the second and third century BCE. That way they can ignore the Laws of God and rewrite religious codes around human behavioural norms to conform to trends and fads.
Remember that the first nation to be reprimanded and brought into line is the nation of Israel, and that people are to be set aside in order to be the centre of the administration of Jesus Christ.
It should be clear to a school child who reads the Bible that, in the last days, God is going to intervene and send His people into a disciplinary captivity and then bring the entire world to submission.
It is not a matter of the churches of the nations adapting the Law of God to whatever aberrancy or perversion becomes the flavour of the month. God does not change and nor does His Law.
If the nations of Australia and America, and Canada, and the UK, and South Africa, and NZ think they can ignore God, then He will send them into captivity. God will raise up a people and give them a face of stone to deal with those nations. Millions will occupy them from within due to their own sins, or from without and by force. In the end, they will face persecution until they turn to God or die.
The word commission comes from two Latin words meaning to go forth with a mission. If you are called of God, you are commissioned to perform a task and you are required to go forth with a mission. If you are asked to perform a task, don’t think of a hundred reasons why you can’t do the task. Think of the one reason why you can do it and you will succeed. Help where you see a need, and be a help to those over you, and a support to those who depend on you.
If you believe, then seek and you will find. If you don't wish to help, at
least don’t hinder. Be disciplined and do things decently and in order. Perform
so that others will see your works and by that glorify God through your faith.
If you love God, love one another and work for the faith in loyalty and in service
of His Kingdom through Jesus Christ.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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