Sabbath 7/10/27/120
It is appropriate that we examine some basic premises upon which Jesus Christ and the Church of God operate and have operated over the last two millennia.
The basic truths are fundamental to the operation of the Church of God and its identification over the centuries.
Axiom 1. There is One True God, the only God, who alone is eternal, immortal
and invisible (1Tim. 1:17; 6:16).
Axiom 2. God is immutable or unchangeable as is His counsel (Heb. 6:17-18).
Axiom 3. The One True God no man has ever seen or ever can see. No man has heard
His voice or seen His form ever (Jn. 1:18, 1Jn. 5:20, 1Tim. 6:16).
Axiom 4. Jesus Christ, the one being in the bosom of the Father, spoke or declared
Him (Jn. 1:18).
Axiom 5. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (Heb. 13:8).
Axiom 6. Jesus Christ came to do the will of the Father and finish His work
(Jn 4:34).
Axiom 7. God is the God and Father of Jesus Christ and also the elect (Jn 20:17
Rom. 15:6; 2Cor.1: 3; 11:31; Eph. 1:3,17; Col. 1:3; Heb. 1:1 ff. 1Pet. 1:3;
2Jn. 3; Rev. 1:1,6; 15:3).
Axiom 8. Eternal life is given to the Church and this is conditional on them
knowing the Father and Jesus Christ whom He sent (Jn. 17:3;) and continuing
in patient well doing (Rom. 2:7).
Axiom 9. Scripture cannot be broken (Jn. 10:34-35).
Axiom 10. The Holy Spirit is the power of God that God uses to empower the people
He chooses, calls, justifies and glorifies through Jesus Christ (cf. Jn. 20:22;
Acts 2:1-47; Rom. 8:28-35)
Axiom 11. Not one jot or tittle will pass from the Law of God until heaven and
earth pass away (Mat. 5:18).
It follows that:
Premise 1 (Axiom 5). If Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow and
does the will of God (Axiom 6); and
Premise 2 (Axiom 2). God is immutable; then
Conclusion 1: Both continue in the tasks God determined and set before them.
Premise 3. If Christ was sent to establish the Church in immortality, which
was to be extended to it as it was extended to Christ (Axiom 8); and
Premise 4. Christ is the same over time continuing in the will of the Father;
then
Conclusion 2: The Church, under the direction of Christ, continues in those
teachings and the Laws of the Father, being added to according to the will of
the Father.
Premise 5. Christ said that the gates of death would not prevail against the
Church; and
Premise 6. Scripture cannot be broken (Axiom 9); then
Conclusion 3: The Church must have been alive for 2000 years from the time Christ
established it under the apostles.
Premise 7. If God has been working through Christ using the Holy Spirit (Axiom
10); and
Premise 8. Does not change and Christ continues in that will; then
Conclusion 4: The Church does not change but rather waxes and wanes in knowledge
as the Spirit is used and directs it.
Premise 9. If God and Christ do not change; and
Premise 10. The Church does not change being based on the Law of God, which
also does not change (Axiom 11) proceeding through the Holy Spirit;
Conclusion 5: Then the Church is an identifiable body of believers that must
adhere to the original teachings of the Church in varying degrees and is present
on the planet to this very day.
From Conclusion 5 we are simply faced with the task of identifying the faith once delivered to the saints (cf. Jude) by identifying the Bible teachings and the doctrines of the early Church, and chart the course of those beliefs through history.
This line of reasoning is irrefutable as the axioms are biblical truths, and the premises are biblically true, and the logic is valid, therefore the conclusions are true.
We can also deduce that God and Christ are not the same people, and that God is the God and Father of Jesus Christ. We know that Christ was granted immortality by God who alone is immortal (Axiom 1). We know that it is God’s plan that we are all to be granted immortality (Axiom 8) and that this immortality is dependent upon the obedience of the brethren to the will of God, and the Law and the Testimony or faith of Jesus Christ (cf. Rev. 12:17; 14:12; Axioms 8 and 11).
It follows then, as the night the day, that the Church has been operational and continuing in its various facets for two millennia and is not the product of some new teachings by organisations that appear from time to time. The early Church was entirely Unitarian. The ditheist system was a pagan doctrine of Attis that entered the Church in the Second Century. This doctrine resulted in the Binitarianism of the Council of Nicea and the Trinitarianism of the Council of Constantinople in 381. It has penetrated the Churches of God on and off for centuries. The last time it entered the Church of God was under the Armstrongite ministries and then later through infiltration into the other Churches of God. To this extent, the Churches of God are rotten with this heresy to this very day and have to be cleansed of it. The way this error could be infiltrated into the Churches of God was by cult indoctrination, and the false idea that the Church had been sleeping from Paul to the Twentieth Century. It was allegedly suddenly given this new truth by Ellen G White, or Armstrong, or any number of false prophets claiming to lead the Churches of God. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very last sermon Herbert Armstrong gave was to reinforce the heresy of the Ditheism he introduced to the Church as the lasting error of his ministry.
The fact is that, from the above, the Church must be alive and must be operational on the same doctrines of the Laws of God, or God and Christ are both liars. Baptism is conferred by the Church on repentant adults and with that conferring comes the Holy Spirit. Each of us has an obligation to find that Church, and be baptised by its officers into the body of Christ, and to work for that body until we die or the return of Messiah, whichever comes first.
The fact is that it can be identified by its historical doctrines and it is not idolatrous. It adheres to the Laws of God. The Church of God in Europe is recorded and their beliefs are also recorded. We have a record of the Church from the Fifteenth Century onwards and there is no difference between them and CCG doctrines at all (cf, Kohn, Sabbatarians in Transylvania, CCG 1998).
The Church of God is to be supported and tithed to and worked for. The organisation that is doing the work and is obedient to the Laws of God in the closest possible degree and sense is that organisation. It is our job to identify the body of Christ each Passover and take the Lord’s Supper with that body. With whomsoever we take the Passover each year is the body we have identified as the body of Christ. If you take it at home alone when you could be with the Church of God, you are saying that you alone are the body and you make God and Christ of no effect and deny the faith.
We see people come into our midst and go out again with one crazy idea after another. The usual reason is that they are not working for the faith and working as part of the body. Most are given strong delusions so that they cannot hurt the work. As John says, “If they were of us they would not have gone out from us.” Each of us should be very careful about what we regard as our role and our responsibilities. Scripture is of no private interpretation. God has not called us as His own special prophets to work alone. Even Eldad was not alone outside the tabernacle. He worked with Medad. The two witnesses are a dime a dozen. We get messages from them often and there seems to be hundreds of them. The US and the British Commonwealth appear to be no longer lands of milk and honey. They appear to be lands of fruit and nuts.
If you can’t follow, you are unfit to lead. If your ideas are sound, they will be embraced by the faithful because the Holy Spirit will make it obvious that the matter is correct. If they don’t agree, the problem lies with you generally. That does not mean the majority is always right. Often the majority is comprised of “yes” men and opportunists controlled by the wrong system of government. The Churches of God abounded with them in the last half of the Twentieth Century.
The Church has set procedures to deal with doctrinal ideas. It has procedures for dealing with dispute, and for handling operational matters and administrations, and a host of matters; and it is through order, and discipline, and loyalty that the work of God is accomplished.
Every single one of us has been chosen before we were formed in the womb and our works were ordained. The demons know us and they know what authority we have or do not have. They work incessantly to undermine us and they try to negate the work of God. You work alone and you will fall.
There is One God who is Father of all who is above all and in us all through the Holy Spirit. There is one Lord Jesus Christ who was anointed by God with the oil of gladness above his partners (Ps. 45:6-7; Heb. 1:8-9) and those partners are the heavenly host who were all created by their Father. There is one baptism for the remission of sins.
Do not be confused by false doctrines. God allowed the Churches of God to be destroyed at the end of the Twentieth Century so that these false doctrines could be removed and the faith promulgated correctly. That is our job. As each man builds, it is tested and what he builds is destroyed or lasts according to the will of God and the perfection of the work.
The power of God is seen in the purity of truth and the small things. God is in the still, small voice in the wilderness.
Loyalty is a precious thing. Abraham was faithful to God even though he was alone. He was faithful and Christ was faithful to He who made him (Heb. 3:2 poieo translated as appointed in the KJV by the Trinitarians).
Christ is a product of the power of God as we all are. He gave up the form he was in and was placed in the form of a man and became obedient. He was loyal and obedient unto death, even death on the stake. So should we all be loyal and obedient.
Of all the Churches in the texts of Revelation, the most loyal and the one loved by Christ is the smallest. That Church is the Church of the Philadelphians.
We should all strive to be as this Church, whose name means the Church of “Brotherly Love.”
Identify the true Church and the true faith once delivered. Work for the faith in loyalty and honesty.
As we say often, ‘If someone is doing more of the work and the truth than CCG, let us know who it is and we will sell all we have and support them.’ If not, we have an obligation to work for the faith once delivered and support one another in the work of God.
Love God with all our heart and with all our mind and with all our strength, and love our neighbours as ourselves. On these two laws hang all the Law and the prophets. Our meat is to do the will of God and finish His work (cf Jn. 4:34).
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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