Sabbath 30/06/28/120
The Feast of Trumpets 1/07/28/120 (Part A)
Dear Friends,
As you read this I will have been in Africa for a week and working towards getting many new African brethren inducted and our new ministers credentialed. Our team will now work on to the Feast instructing the faithful in the Law of God and the implications for any just society in following those Laws.
We are reminded of the restoration all those years ago when the children of Israel had returned from their exile in Babylon. They were a long time in restoring and building the temple and then finally, under Artaxerxes II, they were provisioned and Ezra and Nehemiah restored the faith (see The Sign of Jonah and the History of the Reconstruction of the Temple (No. 13). The story and sequence of the restoration and its implications for the Calendar are contained in the paper Reading the Law with Ezra and Nehemiah (No. 250).
We are now in the twenty-eighth year of the forty-ninth jubilee since that restoration. The year 2027 will be the jubilee and 2028 will be the beginning of the fiftieth jubilee since the restoration. It will thus be a jubilee of jubilees and a fitting start the rule of Christ for the Millennium.
In effect, the Law will be read in Africa and as well in Canada; and so, two continents on either side of the Atlantic will have significant festivals, as well as those in Asia and Southeast Asia who are also doing that. Some people have been within the Churches of God for decades while others are new at the task. There will be many thousands of new members in CCG hearing the Law of God for the first time being fully expounded.
Our translation program for the KiSwahili is aimed at getting the entire Law series translated and fully explained by the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. By the Last Great day we will have finished and then we will explain the coming Kingdom of God. The trade language of East Africa is KiSwahili. A Swahili is someone who speaks the language called KiSwahili. It is based on many Arabic loan words and there are a number of Muslims who also speak it. Our message is hopefully one of reconciliation to Christians and Muslims alike regarding the one True God and the faith of the Bible and the Koran free of the traditions that have corrupted those two faiths and Judaism with them.
Further south on the Limpopo River in Zimbabwe there is a tribe called the Lemba. That tribe has Semitic features but is distinctly black. They follow ancient Jewish customs that seem to date back to before the Babylonian captivity at the beginning of the Sixth century BCE. In other words, these people follow customs that even predate Ezra and Nehemiah. They say that they are Jews who were cut off from Israel and the Middle East by the Babylonian captivity. They could not return and so they all took local wives and settled in Zimbabwe and built the ancient city of Zimbabwe. They do not follow the Hillel calendar and determine their month according to the conjunction, determined three days beforehand according to the decline of the waning moon.
They were recently tested and their YDNA showed that they were indeed Jews and their priests of the Buba clan were all Aaronic Priests or Cohenim. They have faithfully preserved their heritage from the days of the first Temple period and before the records of Ezra and Nehemiah. This Reading of the Law in East Africa is directed at the restoration of the Law of God on the African continent, yet there has been a remnant there keeping the Jewish faith for two and a half millennia, but they themselves have not kept it fully and have not read the Law as required each Sabbath Year because they also had lost sight of the jubilees.
None had accepted the risen Christ who himself declared the
jubilee in his ministry and the “acceptable year of the Lord,” which is another
name for the jubilee year.
In year 21 of jubilee 120 we read the Law of God on the North American continent
in the USA. Now we will again read it there, but in Canada, and expand now to
Africa and to other continents as well.
All of this activity points towards the Messiah and to the restoration under Messiah for the coming millennial system. It is all our fond hope that in 2012 we will read the Law of God from Jerusalem with the Messiah or, at the very least, with the two Witnesses who precede his coming.
We know of a certainty that 1263.5 days from the appearance of the Witnesses (see the paper The Witnesses (No. 135) on the Temple Mount clothed in sackcloth, and their beginning to prophesy as it is written in the book of Revelation, that they will be resurrected from the dead 3.5 days after they are killed. They will rise at the trumpet call of the Archangel and the descent of Jesus Christ for the First Resurrection of the dead. Those who are left alive will watch and wait on the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep before us. And we will all be translated to spirit beings and taken to be with the Lord at Jerusalem, where we will commence to restore this sick and broken world.
This process is examined in the paper Trumpets (No.136). The return of the Messiah and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb are the two major elements of this process.
There is, at present under way in Africa, resurgence in religion from the superstitions of the past into an awakening. The people are starting to grasp for an understanding of the true Faith once delivered to the saints. It is slow at present with many people simply grasping to understand what is happening to them. The materialism of the west and the world has no answer to the problems, but some of the people seek to take part in that materialism whilst those who appear to have no hope turn to religion. There is thus a larger and larger gap in the minds and the aspirations, as well as the material welfare of world society.
Materialism is a cruel master. It enslaves by its own desires and satisfies needs only to stimulate greed rather than need with no sound ethical basis for judgment.
The Roman Catholic Church is growing in Africa whilst it is losing members to Protestants and more serious Bible students in South America. It will always be so where people read the Bible and study what it says. In Europe it is losing members to paganism and materialism. Many such people will fall away from understanding only to be restored at a later date.
In the paper General Distribution
of the Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 122) the importance of the Abyssinian
Church was discussed. Bishop Mueses of Abyssinia went to China via India and
established the Unitarian Sabbatarian Christian faith in China. That was while
the Christians in Europe were inventing triune gods and introducing pagan festivals
like Easter and, a century or so later, the pagan festival that we now know
as Christmas (see the paper The Origins of Christmas
and Easter (No. 235)).
The process by which the triune church adopted the beliefs and customs of the
other religions of the Sun and Mystery Cults, and the process we call paganism,
is termed “syncretism”.
Christianity has adopted so many of these systems of the Mystery Cults that it bears no resemblance to the religion of the Bible. It is at such loggerheads with the teachings of the Bible, and of Christ, and the Apostles that it will not be recognised by Christ at his return.
Our job is to get everyone back on track and thinking biblically so that the nations might have the opportunity to study and understand what is being said to them in this later time of trouble. God uses many people and many strange turns of circumstance to bring people to His system and into His calling.
Let us turn to the study now of the Faith once delivered and the Law system on which it is based. Spend the next three weeks in preparation and study and look towards having a happy time together.
God makes all things clear through His servants and Prophets in the Church and through the operation of the Holy Spirit. When you look for the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the Faith, look inwards first and ask what it is that you have done and how well the Spirit has been able to use you for the Faith. What have you contributed to the faith? Have you tithed faithfully? Have you worked to help the production of the Gospel? How long has it been since you were called to the colours and what have you done with your calling? Have you sat back and done nothing? Have you sought out the work and sought to support it? If you have not, then you have buried your talent. If you have not tithed, you are a thief.
The Holy Spirit, when it operates in the Church, is usually manifest in the humble in the Church that are more interested in helping and serving others than serving themselves. Look at the paper Fruits of the Holy Spirit (No 146).We have noticed that often the people who make the most noise are the ones that do the least. There is always a job to be done and someone that you can help. If you have not got a task to do, then offer to help and do the task with all diligence.
Sometimes we cannot take up some offers for the good of the people involved. For instance, we do not send young women on difficult and dangerous assignments in certain countries, so don’t take offence if your offer is not taken up in such circumstances. There is always something that you can do.
This year make sure that everyone has a rewarding and happy Feast. Do what you can to help others. God’s word does not come back empty or void, and it prospers in the thing to which He sends it. (Isa. 55:11). Cast your bread upon the waters also and you will find it (the profit or success of it) after many days (Eccl. 11:1).
Thus, we labour in the doctrines and the teachings of the Law of God. The Law is not made void through our faith but rather through our faith we establish the Law of God (Rom. 3:31), and sin is transgression of the Law (1Jn. 3:4).
When we have read the Law as we are directed, we may return home. Travel safely and may God bless and keep us in all that we do.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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