New Moon/Sabbath Message 1/3/29/120
This message was given previously in 2002 when the New moon and the Sabbath
fell over the two-day period. It has been adjusted for this year, as it is still
relevant to what is happening at present.
Dear Friends,
This Sabbath is a New Moon and then next week we have Pentecost, The Feast of Weeks. We will have counted the fifty days and we wait on the Holy Spirit.
In this time we are reminded of just what is involved in that feast and what our responsibilities are in the preparation for and carrying out the days of the feast.
This Sabbath and New Moon is an advantage to us in the western world in being able to use the time off in order to study the faith and prepare for the following two-day feast. Some of our people in the East do not have the same system. However, we should use the time we do have available to study.
We should remember the Passover and what it is that we are called to do. This period of the fifty days from the Wave Sheaf offering is critical in our understanding. The original system was as we keep it, from the Sunday within the Feast of Unleavened Bread for fifty days until the Sunday following the seventh Sabbath. The Jews changed the system to the period following the First Holy Day in order to hide the fact that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and that he ascended into heaven before God as our acceptable sacrifice on and as the Wave Sheaf Offering. As we have said many times, no other doctrine is attacked more vehemently by the adversary than this doctrine.
The Wave Sheaf shows that Satan was judged by Christ's actions, and sacrifice, and his acceptance before God.
The Trinity is exposed in this understanding and the Jews and their traditions are exposed by it. Islam is judged by it as the Koran states quite categorically that Judah, and Constantinopolitan Christianity (from 381 CE) are judged by the Torah and the Gospels, and that the Koran is commentary on that Scripture (see Surah 5 The Table Spread). Not one of the three great false systems follows the commands of God, neither Judaism, nor Trinitarian Christianity nor Hadithic Islam. Each one is corrupt.
The Churches of God have been penetrated by Judaisers and by Trinitarians such that it is being destroyed by the false doctrines of Trinitarianism, and US style Charismatic Pentecostalism.
I have even seen it occur in our system that people influenced by false material have even commenced talks contrary to Scripture based on material from these unconverted and often hysterical sources. The principles are these: Read what you like but have the intelligence and conversion to prove all things and do not swallow stupidity and error and blasphemy from these sources.
The facts of history are clear. We know what the calendar was in the Temple period. We know what the New Moons were and Philo tells us they were from conjunction to conjunction. We keep the calendar that was kept in the Temple. Yet, we have people come to us who wish to try and divert us from the true calendar because they have been influenced by the hysteroids, and usually in the US Churches of God.
The Holy Spirit witnesses in us against these people. Surely after all these years we can all discern those who corrupt Scripture and slander the brethren.
I was in Canada some years ago at a Bible study where we addressed a number of people on the fundamentals of our faith, and fielded questions from members of another group associated with the Church of God from a WCG offshoot.
The leader of the group in Canada said to me that they had listened to their leader from the US give a sermon on the crossing of the Red Sea, and the leader said that before Moses raised his rod and arms a member of the tribe of Judah, a Jew, had leapt in ahead and that was the cause of the Red Sea parting. Now the members of the group saw that this was pure unscriptural nonsense, and judaising in the worst way, and they had the sense to leave that man and that group.
Not long after, a member of our organisation of very long standing started to repeat this story at a study and was stopped by one of our coordinators. He was shown how unscriptural it was. He had been listening to this material without checking the Scriptures and was taken in by something so basic that even the members of the Judaisers organisation were not fooled. He has since paid another penalty for error. We should not be fooled by these false doctrines. We should not be taken in by every wind of doctrine. We are all at fault in some way. Often we will hear something that sounds right at first but when we check it is false, and if repeated would compound an error. Sometimes we hang on to error not understanding the error of what we do.
One of the problems we face is that the Churches of God in the end of the Twentieth century were so corrupt and so riddled with respect of persons and error and hypocrisy and self-righteousness that they had to be destroyed. I was asked once many years ago if the Churches of God was the correct system for the Millennium. I replied that if I thought for one minute the churches then in existence were representative of the kingdom of God I would curse God and die. Only individuals in those systems were called and chosen. What is important to remember is that only individuals in the leadership of those organisations are called and chosen and fewer than the brethren they led or lead. Unless our own righteousness exceeds theirs we will not enter the kingdom of God. The persecution of the elect comes from people who pretend to be part of them and join them in order to persecute them.
One of our ministers who had been a minister in two Churches of God both WCG and UCG and a founding member in his nation, said that he had been baptised forty years and he was only now coming into the understanding of the faith and the promised land. He did not survive the trials of the faith.
Study the paper Measuring the Temple (No. 137) and you will see where we are at present. I am the most miserable of sinners and in need of God's Holy Spirit and saving Grace. We all should be aware of our condition and turn to God with all our hearts.
I saw an exchange between one of our coordinators in Southeast Asia and three ministers from the Armstrong system who had turned to Trinitarianism not comprehending what was happening in their calling and their judgment. These ministers were deceived by the false doctrines brought into the WCG system because they were not grounded in the faith. The doctrine on the nature of God was not understood by them. However, in that failure they also failed to understand what was happening with the Holy Spirit. They did not understand Grace. They rightly perceived that we are not saved by our own works but by the Grace of God. Thus we do not earn salvation. We are given salvation by the grace of God being dead in our sins. This doctrine is fundamental to our calling. However, The Grace of God brings us to salvation and repentance. What keeps us saved is obedience to the Law as sin is transgression of the Law.
The antinomians, those who are lawless and the sons of disobedience, cling to the first part of the formula and ignore the second part. They do not understand because their minds are carnal and in enmity to the Law of God. They are saved by grace but retain their salvation in obedience through the Holy Spirit. Thus, by failing to keep the Laws of God in obedience because they love God, they come under condemnation and die. The elect are those who keep the commandments of God and the testimony or faith of Jesus Christ (Rev. 12:17; 14:12). The test of a minister, or apostle or prophet is the same as it always was. If they do not speak according to the Law and the Testimony there is no light in them (Isa. 8:20). Thus every apostle of God and Christ is judged according to the Law and the Testimony. The Arabian prophet, called Muhammad, is judged by the Torah and the Gospel as he himself said in “The Table Spread”. So are all the Hadithic scholars of Islam and all the Jews who pervert the law in the Talmud and all the bishops and priests of the Trinitarian, Binitarian or Ditheist systems and so are we all of the Churches of God. If someone says that the Law of God is done away or that Christ gave us a new law and repealed the old law they show thereby they are liars and false prophets. More importantly, they make Christ out a false prophet as he spoke according to the Law and the Testimony or he was not, and could not be, the Messiah. He himself said that not one jot or tittle shall pass from the Law until Heaven and earth pass away and all is accomplished. Last time I looked they (heaven and earth) were still there and the Messiah is not yet here. Both the Bible and the Koran claim Jesus Christ is in command of the Judgment, as Messiah, at his return. The Koran has been corrupted by Hadithic Islam to disguise these facts. We are given the Holy Spirit so that we can keep the Law of God and worship Him in spirit and in truth. That Spirit enables us to become sons of God in power from the Resurrection from the Dead, as Christ did (Rom. 1:4). It also enables us to grow in the knowledge and love of God while we live.
We can all grieve the Holy Spirit. We all sin. I sin often in word and in thought and sometimes in deed. He who says he is without sin is a liar and the truth of God is not in him.
We know that Pentecost is a reminder of the coming of the Holy Spirit. We know it was kept on a Sunday in the Temple period, and we know that the Church has always kept it on a Sunday except for a very short period in one of the Churches of God in the Twentieth century in the transition from rabbinical Judaising to the true timing of Pentecost.
We know that the Samaritans still keep it on a Sunday but they often get it wrong because of their commencement of the New Year. In another way the Trinitarians get it wrong sometimes because of their manipulation of the pagan Easter system rather than the true Passover. None of their errors excuses us from keeping the faith correctly. The Third New Moon in 29/120 is also the second last Sabbath of the seven Sabbaths to Pentecost. Remember your calling and why we are all called to the faith. Remember that there is a sacrifice for sin and that was Jesus Christ. We are to keep the Law, as not to do so is to sacrifice Christ repeatedly. How can we continue in sin and put Christ to the death, crucified again and again. Pray for our strength and our salvation. Pray that all of us might be able to stand before God. Pray that our garments are made white in the blood of the Lamb and we are forgiven our sins. Pray we are all given the strength to do the jobs we are called to do and that we can retain the understanding of the faith against the cunning of the adversary.
Remember that the leaven in the two loaves at Pentecost is to remind us of the power of the Holy Spirit in the two arms of the faith: In the branch and the golden lampstands; in the two arms of prophecy; in the nation and the Church; and in both human and spiritual host.
Love one another. Pray for the redemption of the world and the fallen host. Pray for those who despitefully use you and slander you for the sake of Christ. Pray that God never leaves us or forsakes us as God promised us through His servants the prophets.
May God bless and keep us this Sabbath and New Moon and on our trip to Pentecost
wherever we are.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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