Sabbath Message 27/5/33/120

Dear Friends,

We are all getting seriously frustrated by the wilful deceit of the WCG offshoots regarding the Hillel Calendar which they knowingly and falsely call the “Hebrew Calendar” and deceive their “clients” into believing it to be the calendar kept in the Temple Period and by Christ and the Apostles. If a company did that in other trading systems they would be charged with fraud. If they did it in the Temple period and tried to pass it off among the priesthood they would have been kicked out of the Temple as were the very Pharisees that started the traditions in the first place and that Christ so stridently condemned.

How can a rational person not be able to see through these lies that the offshoots promote. It seems one has to choose to be inordinately and wilfully ignorant not to see it.

Herbert Armstrong had to lie to get this Hillel abomination accepted. He did that by inventing the lie of Judah having the Oracles of God. This was based on the text in Romans 3:2 where Paul said the words but also notes that some were unfaithful. That did not nullify the faithfulness of God.

Paul was referring in the past tense to the fact that Judah had been given the Bible and the Temple system and they had the authority to preserve it over the Temple period (i. e. they were entrusted). The English has been translated to say the Jews are entrusted (cf. Marshall’s RSV Interlinear Greek-English New Testament).  He did not mean that Judah still had the Oracles of God and if he did he was speaking directly against the authority of Christ.

Peter also deals with the concepts in 1Peter 4:10-11 where it is clear that Judah no longer retained the oracles of God. Peters says: As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied Grace: whoever speaks as one who utters oracles of God; whoever renders service, as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies; in order that in everything that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. The church thus spoke the oracles of God and in that manner the NT is part of the Oracles of God, through the writings of the church. This fiction that Judah retained the Oracles of God is examined in the paper The Oracles of God (No. 184) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p184.html.

We have even seen the ministry of the former WCG system claim that the Sanhedrin retained the power over the Oracles of God after the Temple had been destroyed. They did that so they could keep the illusion going and deceive the “clients” they were fleecing using this false calendar otherwise they would have to admit that Herbert Armstrong was a false prophet and they had been keeping the wrong calendar for over 60 years and are still keeping the wrong calendar. Let us look at the logic of these pseudo-theologians.

The facts are that the authority of the Sanhedrin was done away when the Seventy [two] were ordained by Christ. The demons became subject to the seventy and the church. The words in Greek using the Latin script are hebdomekonta[duo]. The sons of Sceva the High Priest were taught that lesson when they tried to work after the Seventy [two] were ordained (see Lk. 10:1,17 and Acts 19:14).

It seems that these ministers of some of the modern Churches of God do not get the connection between the fact that the Seventy [two] of the appointments at Sinai at the time of Moses (with the two outside of the camp) were replaced by Christ in the ordination of the seventy [two] in the NT. Christ was there at both appointments (1Cor. 10:4).

The logic is clear as we have stated many times. If WCG and the Offshoots believed that the Sanhedrin had the Oracles of God they would keep a Sivan 6 Pentecost and follow the Jewish Passover. They don't because they did not believe it for one minute and NEVER have done so.

The Sanhedrin ceased to exist for centuries thus they had no authority to exercise because they did not exist and the church knew they did not exist.

The Sanhedrin has been reconstituted and exists right now in Jerusalem and if anyone believes they have the authority they should get off their hypocritical backsides and go to Jerusalem and ask for their forgiveness and throw away the NT and keep the Hillel Babylonian abomination.
 
No one does that and they don't because they don't believe the propaganda any more than we do. It is all a great big lie.

The logic of the position is this simple. What calendar did Christ and the apostles and the Church keep?
That is the one we should be keeping because Christ kept it and gave no indication that we should not keep it, nor did he suggest that we change it.

The Big question is how can we identify that calendar? As Arthur Conan Doyle writes; Sherlock Holmes is stated to have said: “you begin by eliminating all the impossible and what you have left no matter how improbable is the truth.” 

Now one thing we can eliminate straight away is the conniving, blaspheming lie that is the Hillel Calendar of the Jews. How can we eliminate that calendar? The answer is simple.

Q. Who was Hillel?
A. Rabbi Hillel II was a Jewish Chief rabbi alive at the middle of the Fourth century of the Current Era.  

He was alive and reigning as chief Rabbi over 328 years after Christ was dead. So why is it called the Hillel Calendar? It is called the Hillel Calendar because it was he that authorised it and introduced it to Judaism in 358 CE. Simply go and look up a Jewish history book or the Encyclopaedia Judaica.

Q. How did he get to do that?
A. In 344 CE two Babylonian rabbis came to him with the Babylonian Calendar and its system of intercalations which had been fixed in the Sixth century BCE. That system was arranged according to a cycle of 19 years which had been invented and determined to have begun 5,770 years ago. The next year 5771 begins on the Babylonian New Year of Rosh Hashanah or 1 Tishri, which for them is not on the New Moon of Trumpets of 8 September but is on 9 September 2010.  Now we know for an absolute fact that this year was not the year of the creation of Adam and Eve as the Bible chronology requires it to have been in the year 4004 BCE, and every Bible Scholar in Christianity knew that is the date and it was published with the 1611 KJV and called the Calendar of Bishop Ussher. How come the Jews call it the year 5770 then? Because their system is based on the Babylonian system of time and intercalations which is a lie and based on pagan theology from Babylon and that calendar will be destroyed by Messiah when he arrives. The Jews themselves admit that to be so (see the paper Why is Passover so late in 1997? (No. 239) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p239.html).

Why does it begin on Tishri on the Day after the New Moon which we know in the Temple period began on the Day of the Conjunction. It begins in Tishri because the Babylonians began their year in Tishri and we know that is false as God told us to begin our year in Abib but the Jews don’t care about what God says and nor, it seems, does the ministry of the offshoots of the Worldwide Church of God of the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries. We have even heard these people telling others that you have to count backwards to determine the calendar. What person would take them seriously? It seems that individuals do just that. They appear to be willing to say anything rather than admit they have been wrong and teaching a wrong calendar all their ministerial lives. The amazing thing is that the people suspend rational judgment and swallow these lies. They gulp down blasphemy. They swallow camels and baulk at gnats and do all the things that Christ accused the Pharisees of doing.

Q. Why have the Jubilees not been restored? We are commanded to restore them and the keep the Sabbath Years and read the laws of God and keep the tithe laws properly and that if we do not keep the Sabbaths and the land does not have its Sabbaths then we will be sent into captivity. God has done it before and He will do it again. Judah was made to restore 70 Sabbaths for 490 years of cycles.

A. The simple answer appears to be that once the Jubilees were restored the Sabbaths would have been put in place. The Jews would have lost their “traditions” for which Christ condemned them. With the RCG/WCG system it would have reduced the tithe income of the WCG and offshoots. Further the Law would have been read every Sabbath year and it would have made it obvious that there were only three offerings a year and that there was to be no offering on Atonement. There would also have been only the one Third-year offering in the third year and not in a random cycle. The second tithes would have been seen for the purpose for which they were instituted and there would have been no such thing as excess second tithe and the lies and deceit and corporate fraud of the ministry would have been stamped out, as will happen very soon.

Had the Jubilees been restored it would also have been obvious that the 49-year Jubilee of the Pharisees was wrong and the lie of the Oracles being with Judah would have also been exposed. The ministry all know how to restore the Jubilees because many have admitted to me the significance of the texts necessary to the restorations and we have told them how and have done it already for the Churches of God. The structure of the Calendar and Jubilees is all in the Bible. God does not give us laws that we cannot implement or keep. The calendar has been completely and correctly restored by CCG (see the paper God’s Calendar (No. 156) at http://www.ccg.org.english/s/p156.html).

The restorations can be identified and have all been restored along with the New Moons and the Wave Sheaf (see the papers Reading the Law with Ezra and Nehemiah (No. 250)  at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p250.html and The Meaning of Ezekiel’s Visions (No. 108) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p108.html).

The Rabbinical system tried to destroy the Temple Calendar and did so as soon as the Temple system itself was destroyed. It did that by introducing a system of Postponements under the guise of observations AFTER the fall of the Temple. (See the paper War with Rome and the Fall of the Temple (No. 298) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p298.html.) The Pharisees never had control of the calendar until after the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. See also the paper The Calendar and the Moon: Postponements or Festivals (No. 195) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p195.html.

The attempts to destroy the calendar began as soon as the Temple was destroyed. Josephus began his attempts but he was unable to prevent the decrees from being recorded and had to issue the correct dates for those decrees as his work would have been rejected by the Romans. He wrote the Wars in 75 CE but the Antiquities were much later and show Pharisaic structural error.  Also we now have archaeological evidence that shows absolutely what the Jubilees and the correct dates and sequence were. See the paper Distortion of God’s Calendar in Judah (No. 195b) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p195b.html.

How can anyone possibly think you can postpone a day set aside by God as Holy? Yes, we know we have to keep Atonement and anyone who does not will be cut off from their people. However it is inconvenient if we hold it on a Friday or another day so we will call Saturday the Day of Atonement and then we will only have to keep one Day Holy; or we could put it on another more convenient day. What would you do if your kids came to you with that logic when you told them to do something? You would punish them for it, and God is no different as our Father. He is going to deal with us for that very fact. Judah went through the Holocaust and they still did not get it, and so did we, but we will be protected because of that disaster. Unfortunately, the COG in the USA and the British Commonwealth got off lightly and they still don’t understand, keeping the wrong calendar and the wrong system and the wrong doctrine on the Nature of God (see the paper Ditheism (No. 076B) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p076b.html).  

Q. Can you postpone the Sabbath to Sunday?
A. Of course you cannot do that. If you can then there is no calendar under the law of God and any day can be postponed. The Fourth Commandment no longer exists under that view. No Church of God or Jew believes such a puerile assertion. If anyone claimed that was the case then they would be ridiculed and sent to the Trinitarians who got that view from the Sun Cults, as we all know to be the case historically.  Yet the ministry not only support that assertion in regard to the calendar but they also withhold the truth in unrighteousness and lie to the brethren regarding the structure of the postponements.

One of the CCG was explaining the postponements to people in WCG some years ago. The WCG people, thinking that it was CCG that did that said: Oh that is ridiculous why would you want to do that? The CCG person said: “No we do not do that; it is you that do that.” They could scarcely believe they were being told the truth; yet they went on keeping the same godless rules that they had just declared to be ridiculous. That, my friends, is the power of brainwashing by a lying and deceitful ministry in a group that identifies itself as a social system and not a Church of God led by the Holy Spirit under the Laws of God.  Some of those same people now no longer keep even any pretence of the Hillel System and have gone to Trinitarianism and the Sun Cults. Others have simply kept the same blasphemous Hillel system underground because they are too mentally damaged to be guided by the laws of God into truth. They have been terminally damaged by a dishonest ministry that withholds the truth in unrighteousness.  The wrath of God will soon be unleashed upon them as Scripture foretells (Rom. 1:18).  

The Historical Record

It is a matter of historical record that the Churches of God have kept God’s Calendar for two millennia and have never kept the Hillel abomination until the Twentieth century under WCG and now its offshoots in the Twenty-first century. That this false structure is able to get away with this confidence trick is because of the wilful indolence of its ministry and its so-called members who seem unable to identify error and straight-out lies. It even gets down to an inability to count and be unable to determine the simple logic that says Christ and the Apostles who lived in the First century could not possibly have kept a calendar that did not even come into existence in Judah until the Fourth century and was introduced from pagan structures in Babylon that were known and ignored as pagan idolatry by the Temple system for over 600 years until its destruction.  When the false system and its postponements were introduced they were so irrelevant to all the Christian churches including the Churches of God they were ridiculed and condemned and the records still exist. 

One might say hello is anybody home?  It is almost as though the entire ministry took a significant selection of people and slowly and carefully weeded out any sign of intelligence in the system so its ministers could get way with having a wealthy and lavish lifestyle without being called to account in any serious way by a congregation that might have had the desire to analyse what it was being taught. Some of the ministers themselves resort to appeals to ignorance and insanity such as appeals to ignore the historical records and just read the Bible. They then assert that the Bible means the opposite of what it says and the historical record confirms that was the case during the Temple period. They are assisted by the Rabbis in the dishonesty because they would rather keep their traditions than repent and keep the laws of the One True God.  Christ and the Church would have condemned them publicly and stridently; and the Church of God condemns them today as we condemn them now. The facts are that of all the Sabbatarians in the Churches of God left in the world today only a small percentage of the WCG offshoots are left keeping the Hillel abomination and they number less than 15,000 and are confined to the US and White BC with a few in Europe. Numerically they represent less than .01% of the entire Sabbatarian system and are statistically irrelevant. They are not part of the work of God in the Twenty-First century. Because they waste millions in the US on the media they think they do the work of God. They think they are rich but those that are not dead are poor, pitiable, blind, and naked. One of them admitted on sermons last week that they had less than 40 people in Nigeria and they are not sure even if any are left there in the COGs. We know for a fact that there are about 30 people left in Kenya. The rest of the thousands upon thousands there keep the Temple Calendar and are Biblical Unitarians. Is God telling you something? The vast body of the Temple of God which are the Churches of God have simply left them behind and they don’t get it. Don’t you think it is about time they woke up to the facts and repented? We certainly do.

We know for a fact that Nigeria was a large church of thousands under the Caldwell Conference of the COG (SD) but they allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Jerusalem group that were Judaisers to begin to keep the Hillel Calendar; and what happened? They collapsed just like WCG and the Denver Conference of COG (SD) and all the offshoots. Yet they still don’t get it. Is anybody home?

Because CCG has most of the genuine Sabbatarian ministers in the world all grouped together and agreed on the doctrines of the Original Church these apostates hold their disintegration up as proof of their authenticity. Because God is building a massive church now in CCG we are compared to the Roman Catholics and the failure of the offshoots is held as proof that they are authentic. Sorry my friends. Their failure is due to their heresy and their failure to repent. They are authentic Armstrong heretics and that is all they are. Hillel is an abomination and it is contrary to the Laws of God. The Rabbis know it is wrong and soon they will declare a false Messiah and issue a new calendar and this idiotic doctrine of Judah having the Oracles of God will be used to mislead many (see the paper The False Messiah (No. 067b) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p067b.html).

The History of the Church of God is found in the papers General Distribution of the Sabbath-Keeping Churches (No. 122) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p122.html and Role of the Fourth Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p170.html. See also the Origin of the Christian Church in Britain (No. 266) at http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p266.html.

The Churches of God have kept the Temple Calendar for two millennia until Herbert Armstrong introduced the Hillel abomination. We can determine that fact from history. We have never kept Hillel until the US offshoots in the Twentieth century under Armstrong. The cult of the personality has become so entrenched in the US systems that they literally worship the man and are unable to rationally discern the truth.

The calendar that the Waldensians used is able to be clearly seen from the record of the Eastern Waldensians call the Sabbatarians in Transylvania. The English translation of the German is available from CCG Publishing. It was written by Rabbi Kohn, Chief Rabbi at Buda and Pest at the end of the Nineteenth century. The work has a foreword to it to explain the circumstances under which it was written and the history of the church development.

It shows quite clearly that they kept the New Moons and the Ancient Temple Calendar and we know the system they used. We see how one section of them became Jews in the Nineteenth century and began to keep Rosh Hashanah. Kohn says that proves that they were exposed to later Jewish influence as Rosh Hashanah did not become observed until the Third century CE. The records of the Transylvanians show quite clearly they were Biblical Unitarians and kept the Temple Calendar and had the same system of worship on the same days as CCG. We should see the significance of Kohn’s comments. The developments from the Third century were when the postponements also began to be virtually universal in Judaism. However, it was NEVER the case in the Churches of God. Nor was it the case in ANY other church until the Ukrainian Orthodox Church began playing with it in the beginning of the last millennium. 
 
A cursory study of history will demonstrate what happened. However, none of the WCG offshoots and their ministers is able to rationally discern error from truth if it means changing their paradigm. They simply have not been taught to be able to do that nor to have the integrity to see the necessity to discern fact from fiction and their people love to have it so. They are driven by self-righteousness and they will defame and destroy anyone who challenges their paradigm and their false doctrine.

We also know exactly what calendar the Church of God (SD) used in the Caldwell Conference and what Godhead they used. They were Biblical Unitarians and were accused of being Arians which is incorrect as it is currently defined. They followed the Ancient Temple Calendar using the New Moon conjunction.

The Church of God (SD) in Oregon did not even keep the Feasts. However, they did calculate the Passover according to the New Moon Conjunction. Herbert Armstrong tried to get them to keep the feasts but they would not. He did not join with Caldwell because he was a junior minister and so he had to invent a calendar that was different from Caldwell otherwise there was no reason for people to join him and not Caldwell and that appears to be the reason he adopted the Hillel Calendar. He had no historical precedent for doing so in the Churches of God.

Herbert Armstrong was fired from the Oregon Conference of the COG (SD) in 1940 for teaching error. He was paid by them for quite a few years when he alleged he was running the RCG, which merely proves the RCG/WCG was part of the Sardis system. The COG (SD) ministry produced the payroll checks at a meeting to demonstrate the facts of the matter.

Without doubt Herbert Armstrong was the most corrupt, dishonest, self-serving, ego-maniacal, false prophet to ever have served in the Churches of God in two thousand years. He was without doubt the idol shepherd of Zechariah 11:15. Yet this self-serving apostate ministry still hold these false doctrines up as being true when they know they are not true, and a gullible uneducated populace of largely whites gulp down the lies because they are incapable of exposing the false doctrine for the farce it really is.  God is about to deal with them in accordance with the oracle of God as He gave it to Zechariah (chapter 12).

The next section will deal with the Bible structure of the calendar as determined from the New Moons.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General