Passover 14–21 Abib, 28th year of the 120th Jubilee since the expulsion from Eden.
Dear Friends,
By now you will be preparing for, if not on the way to, the Passover.
We will see each other and renew old friendships and make new ones. Most importantly, we will renew ourselves in the Holy Spirit with God.
This time we have much to do and much to discuss.
The ministry will have much to brief you all about.
Some of the churches will be briefed after the Passover. Some will have to wait on even later arrivals.
This year is important to us all.
Each of us should be reconciled to one another. If you have something against your brothe, then leave your gift at the altar and go and be reconciled. Often you will have to wash the feet of the very person you have been having a problem with or with whom you may have a potential problem. I have often noted the way that seems to happen in the Churches of God at Foot-washing on the Passover. Coincidence? Not really. God addresses many problems at this time.
Some of us have problems we have not addressed for a period of time and those problems need to be fixed. Make sure it is not you that is beating his/her chest saying: “Thank God I’m not like them, sinners and spiritually dead.” I have indeed heard some people in effect say that in this Church. They are still saying it from the sidelines and don’t understand that it is they who are at fault. Make your peace one with another and remain within the body of Christ.
By this time you should have studied the Passover papers so that you know what is required of you. You should have studied the Significance of the Footwashing (No. 99) and the Significance of the Bread and the Wine (No. 100).
You should be prepared to go into the Lord’s Supper and also you should be now studying so that you can be prepared to take others through that sequence and explanation (see the paper The Lord’s Supper (No. 103)).
The Ministry will take you through the important texts of the Passover this year wherever you are. This year is a “revisions and learning year” for all in all nations.
It is our aim that all in the Church will be in a position to be used to grow churches around them, no matter where they are and no matter what their calling.
This year of rest will see a consolidation and then we will commence to implement the next phase. This next period will see a significant expansion in the work in the non-English speaking world, as well as growth in the extant churches in that area.
Some of you will be asked to go to different locations this year to undertake missionary duties. This next seven years is a most important period and it all starts with you the individual at this Passover.
I have seen people who have kept the Passover for many years say on keeping their first Passover with CCG: “I now, for the first time, fully understand what is happening through the entire process.” After they have done it, they understand much more than they thought they would understand as they went to Passover. The Lord is clear: “Give your ways to the Lord and He will establish your thoughts”. It is not the other way around. It is not, “Think about the Lord a little and he will establish your ways.” It means do it when you are told and then you will be given the understanding of what it is you are to do. Thus, obedience is rewarded with more understanding, and tardiness and disobedience is punished with no further knowledge. That is why people who do not implement what it is they are told or read in the Bible are never given more to understand. That is how entire churches die or are spiritually dead; or at best they are lukewarm and spewed out of God’s mouth.
We have seen ministers take entire churches from the communion because they themselves did not understand through disobedience. As we warned you all, before the Sixth Year even started, that the Sixth year was a pruning year and would be so until the 29th of Adar 27/120.
We are now out of that period and in the Sabbath Year of the Lord God. Please devote your time to the study of the faith, even more so than you have done before. Instil the faith into your minds so that your defence can be automatic. You must be able to give an answer of the hope that lies within you.
By the end of the next Sabbath cycle in the Sixth year of trials, you will all be tested such as never before and you will all be a source of encouragement for those not yet called, or called but not yet used in the work of God. Like the blocks of the temple, some have been placed further away and are not yet able to be used because the other blocks with which they will fit are not yet called.
This next cycle requires each of us to be prepared and hardened for the struggle ahead.
I must encourage you all for what you have achieved in the last seven years. It is truly remarkable and the work of God is on a sound footing. The translation programs must be completed within the next seven years. There will be no second chances. Once we are complete and the Gospel is preached throughout all nations as a witness, then the end shall come. From the year 2012 to the year 2019 we will see many extraordinary things and our preparation over this cycle will be tested. We have twenty-one years to bring the world into understanding, judgment, and subjection to God through Jesus Christ.
Use this time wisely.
Eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus Christ in a worthy manner. Prepare yourselves for what lies ahead. Love one another as you love God.
Have a wonderful Passover. Eat the fat and drink the sweet, after you have reconciled yourselves to God and washed your robes in the Blood of the Lamb.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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