This Sabbath we are in the process of vetting and baptising the people who have come to us in East and Central Africa.

It is a very involved process and it is important that each person understands what it is they are doing and to count the cost of the commitment they are making.

We all would do well to go back to our own baptism and the commitment we made to the One True God to obey His Laws and to be loyal to the Church that makes up the Body of His Son, Jesus Christ.

God chooses us and gives us to Christ who is tasked with not losing one of us. The sequence is in Roman 8:29.

There are many that are suffering – some for the simple act of casting a vote, as we see in Zimbabwe. That nation that was once the breadbasket of Africa has been turned into a place of jackals and the hissing of snakes. The brutality meted out to the citizens by the Zanu-PF and the supporters of Robert Mugabe is horrendous. If we placed the photos of the cruelty and brutality meted out to the men and women there you would all be horrified. Their homes are also being burned and they are dispossessed. It is suffice to say the degradation and cruelty being carried out is that of perverted beasts and not the behaviour of rational human beings. At 15 million% inflation they have little chance of survival in their current state. The military and police and the so-called “war veterans” are taking what is left, and the rest of the populace are being left to starve. The nation cannot survive as it is.

That the UN does not intervene is merely a mark of its weakness and the cowardice of the member states. Relying on the African Union to judge the matter is like asking the foxes to determine the conduct in the henhouse. Too few of them are genuine democracies with any concern for human rights and welfare, and many of their own countries are a disgrace.

What we are seeing is a descent into barbarism without the checks and balances that we would impose on the matter. The recent charges by Rwanda against France, regarding the genocide in Rwanda, is denied vigorously but unfortunately the Roman Catholic Church got its support from Europe and seemingly France, as did the local Hutu militias. The current build-up in the Congo at Goma may well see the conflict from there escalate and extend to all-out war to the west and to Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Kenya saw terrible internal disorder and they are not out of it by any means. 350,000 subsistence farmers were displaced in the violence and that means 75% of the white maize crop was lost. The farmers are not being properly paid and so what is left is leaking across the border into Tanzania where they are receiving more funds at 2000 Ks as opposed to 1300 Ks at home. There are many more orphans and they have to be fed. Remember this problem in your prayers and offerings. What happens to a child in the first three years affects its brain development, more or less for life.

The road you have chosen is not an easy one. But it is known by God. You were predestined to be part of the elect from the foundation of the world. Note what Paul says to the Romans in the trials they went through in the early Church. They were tried and they suffered but were gradually overcome by the Gnostics and the Sunday-worshippers of the Triune God and the Ancient Mother Goddess system. That system took over the world, and rules today. You are called out as a tiny flock and you have to face the terrible trials imposed upon you by these Trinitarian, Sunday-worshipping systems as Rwanda was tried and had to face the attempted extermination of the Tutsi by the Trinitarians who wanted to get rid of them seemingly because they thought they may have had links to the ancient Israelites and the Sabbatarians of Abyssinia.

There is a purpose for all that happens and we are destined for that great purpose.

Roman 8:18-39

18] I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. [19] For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; [20] for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; [21] because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.

We know from this text that there is a purpose for the creation. God subjected the creation to futility in the hope that by its existence and its operation the creation, which was made for the development of the human species in order to teach it care and consequence in its development, might reach a higher order of liberty commensurate to the liberty achieved by the sons of God. Thus the decay it suffers will be like the decay the human condition suffers and will be set free with the sons of God on their glorification.

[22] We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; [23] and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

The creation was groaning in travail then almost two thousand years ago. How much more is it now suffering in these Last Days? The real problem is that it is not suffering from Global Warming. It is rather emerging from this last Mini Ice Age that in reality started only three hundred and fifty years ago. We can see when that happened from the fort at Cape Town, SA. The fort was built in the early 1600s ON the water line. It is now kilometers from the sea. It will go back to the sea front soon as we warm again. The greenhouse gas emissions’ scientists are wrong. We are polluting the planet and that will stop soon. Our hope is the thing that saves us. Christ will come to save those who eagerly await us.

God searches the hearts of mankind and the Holy Spirit intercedes for us and makes intelligible our needs and desires where we ourselves are incapable of expressing our true hearts in prayer according to the will of God. In that way we are saved according to the will of God.

[24] For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? [25] But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. [26] Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. [27] And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Those who are called according to His purpose are developed so that all things they experience work together for the good.

 [28] We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

The key factor is that they are called according to His purpose. There are many called but few are chosen. Only the elect are the chosen of God. That is why people come into the Church of God and they leave it again drifting from place to place. These are the called but not chosen. They seek to do their own will and are incapable of doing the will of God. Many of them are ministers that split the churches and preach false doctrine to draw after themselves those who are trying to find God and have money to assist them.

However, God has already predestined those whom He foreknew from before the foundation of the world. These people are already predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

[29] For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. [30] And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.  [31] What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us?

So, in this process, He then commences to justify us. That does not mean He argues for us but rather He develops us and makes us conform to the image of His Son so that we may all then be fully justified, as we justify our own writings to set them perfectly in order as we are ourselves set in order so that we may be glorified as Christ was glorified with the Glory of God.

So God did not spare Christ, His own son, but gave Him up for us that we might be saved, restored and glorified in order that we might all receive the gifts and glory that are Christ’s.

[32] He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?

In the same way, we walk before God and are blessed and saved by God in the Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the only thing that can indict us before God through Christ. Satan is the accuser of the brethren but he is incapable of judging or dealing with us. He and the demons are subject to us and have been since the ordination of the seventy [two] and the Holy Spirit brings a seventy [two] into the body and establishes it in the body on a continual basis so that we, as the seventy [two], form the council of judgment in the Church and we are set aside and brought to glorification year by year until the redemption of our bodies at the coming of the Messiah at the end of this age. We are the Sanhedrin of God on Earth.

 [33] Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies;  [34] who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us?  

Whilst it is Christ that judges us, he also intercedes for us and brings us into salvation and glorification in the sight of God through the actions of the Holy Spirit.

So those of us who are now being brought into the Faith, and especially those now in Africa, should look to the calling we are given. We should be content with the circumstances in which we are called and the way we find ourselves. The love of Christ will see us through all trials and tribulations.

[35] Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? [36] As it is written, "For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." [37] No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  [38] For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  [39] nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All of us should thank God for what He does for us and through us. Satan and this world have no power over us save that which is given to them from above.

Each nation is to tithe and to assist its own poor. The World Conference has serious responsibilities and we need to help others and in that way we need the help of the wealthier nations to help those most in need.

We all work together so that we may achieve more through the power and love of God.

Who will stand before God justified? Is it those who work together for the good and help those in poorer nations and spread the Gospel of the Kingdom of God in all languages so that the end might come; or those who sit in homes on couches talking the talk yet doing nothing and tithing to no one and helping no one? The answer is obvious.

Let Christ judge those who bury their talents and assist no one. We see it all the time. Those with little strength do the work of God and those with the most do the least. It has been that way for the last sixty years of the Churches of God.

Count the cost. You have been called to the work of God. Do not look back, and envy no one. There is much to do. Obey those in power over you and make their work easier. Love one another and show thereby that you love God. There are many being called at present in Africa. Pray for those who bring them to the birth and for their calling and the strength of their faith.

Wade Cox

Coordinator General