Sabbath 090837120

Dear Friends,

It appears that the LCG has now joined the long slide into the pit of heresy with their recent Q and A article  on the Question “Is it wrong to pray to Jesus.”  We have addressed this issue before as it is persistent.

The article is at:
http://www.lcg.org/cgi-bin/lcg/qanda/lcg-qa.cgi?category=qanda1&item=1218666801

In their answer they state:
“ No, it is not wrong to pray to Jesus Christ. God is our loving Father, but we should not neglect His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.”  

Now this claim would most probably have at the least earned them the disdain of the laity. Never at any time was it ever permissible to pray to Jesus Christ in WCG and never at any stage has anyone from WCG now belonging to CCG prayed to Jesus Christ; and we are sure that neither have the offshoots ever heard a prayer offered to any being other than to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ.

This was one of the most fundamental doctrines of the WCG.  Had anyone been stupid enough to pray to Christ at any WCG service, as one of our senior ministers raised in WCG said, the deacons would have grabbed him by the elbows and marched him off the stage and into the street.

Now it was true that the doctrines on the nature of God were completely screwed up into a Ditheist structure, and not Binitarian as claimed by some uninformed people in the offshoots. It is also true that none ever went so far as to pray to Jesus Christ, although the unscriptural theology of those such as Nelte may well have developed to the point where they are now so far down the track as this error.  Once this error is established the next step is to advance the cults of prayer to the Mother goddess and then to the saints that is the cult of the Latria the hyper dulia and the dulia or the Roman Catholics.

The destruction of the nature of God in WCG was covered in the paper Ditheism (No. 076B) and Effects of 20th Century Churches of God Doctrines on the Nature of God (No. 076D).

The error of prayer to Christ came in from a Good News article released by Armstrong and referred to in the paper below Praying to Christ or Beings other than the Father (No. 111B).

In an effort to justify this heresy the writer of the LCG article refers to the statements in Acts by Stephen in committing his spirit to the Resurrection under Christ.  This was never understood to be a prayer but rather a direct commission of the spirit of Stephen to the Resurrection thus showing that Christ had control of the Resurrection and judgment and that Stephen was telling the Jews about to kill him that the Christ that they killed would judge them all.  This was always understood by the Church of God for what it was; except seemingly these later LCG writers.

What did they say?
“We can see from Scripture that Jesus Christ is worthy of receiving our prayer. We understand that Jesus Christ was the God of the Old Testament (1 Corinthians 10:1–4). He was with God the Father from the beginning (John 1:1–4). The Word, who was with God at the beginning, became flesh (John 1:14–15).”

The heretical comments first establish the premise that Christ was the God of the OT.  That is complete heresy and a lie.  He was the elohim of Psalm 45:6-7 who was anointed with the oil of gladness above his partners that were the elohim or sons of God by his elohim who was the Father.  This lie that the Father was not revealed in the OT was the fundamental heresy of the WCG under Armstrong.  It was not taught by the Church of God over centuries.  The major problem was that they knew this was a deliberate lie as they taught in their Long Bible Correspondence Course in Lesson 8 that the name of the God of the OT was Eloah.  The Bible makes it quite clear that He was the God of the Temple and the Object of prayer and worship and the entire Temple including its artefacts and priests were devoted to Eloah (Ezra 4:23-7:26). Eloah is the name of the One True God and that name permits of no plurality whatsoever. Having expressed this lie they then proceed to misrepresent the basis of Stephen’s address and plea.

 “ Scripture gives us the example of the deacon Stephen—the first recorded martyr of the Apostolic Church. "And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’" (Acts 7:59). Even at the very end of his life, while he was being murdered for his bold preaching, Stephen called out not to God the Father but to Jesus Christ, his Savior. Stephen knew that he had a profound relationship with both God the Father and with Jesus Christ. Jesus accepted worship, the reverence of others, towards Him. When He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, "…they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him" (Matthew 28:9).”

This next lie is advanced that Christ accepted worship.  It is true that the apostles “proskuneo”ed to Christ, that is they did obeisance to him but so will the Jews proskuneo to the elect as we see in Revelation 3:9. That is not worship in the sense that it is worship of the deity; it is obeisance as humans gave to rulers.

They then add that we must not neglect God the Father “directing the majority of our prayers to him.”

So apparently as long as we direct 51% or more of our prayer to the One True God who sent Christ (Jn. 17:3) we can pray to Christ in spite of the fact that Christ told us specifically to pray to the Father and whatever we ask of the Father in his name will be granted us.  He commanded us to pray to the Father in secret and our Father will reward us openly (Mat. 6:5-9-18).  Thus it is the Father that is the object of prayer and the omniscient God that has knowledge of our needs and rewards us openly. So also he told us in Luke 11:1-4, and in verse 13 we see that it is the Father that provides as the object of prayer.

These offshoots now make the claim that Jesus Christ is God, as God the Father is God.  It is correct that the condition of elohim is being extended to humans as it is held by the elohim that comprise all the sons of God and we will all serve the central entity Eloah, who is now becoming Ha Elohim or The God as the centre of the plurality of the sons of God (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:4-7; cf. also Prov. 30:4-9).

The being who was the elohim of the patriarchs that spoke to them and was the Angel of Redemption (Gen. 48:15-17) and was one of the Thousand (Job 33:23).  Yahovah of Hosts will send Messiah back soon to restore Jerusalem as we were told by Yahovah of Hosts through the prophet Zechariah 2:1-9

The elohim appear repeatedly through the Psalms and to suggest that Christ was the god of the OT is a blatant untruth that arises through complete ignorance of the Scriptures.

They went on about our obligation to pray to the Father even though it is ok to pray to the Son.  We must not ignore Christ’s instruction to honour our loving Father. Then they use Mathew 17:5 to justify prayer to Christ as the demonstration of a loving relationship with Christ. They use Col. 3:17 regarding doing all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father “through” him.  This is to make it appear that by that we pray to him giving thanks but the text says by him.  The word is di or by but the thanks are given direct to the Father in his name.

This devious piece of Ditheist Doctrine ultimately leads to Sabbellianism and is the reason why the Sardis era is in the Second Resurrection and Christ says that it has the name that it is Living but it is dead. (Rev. 3:1)  See also Praying to Christ or Beings other than the Father (No. 111B).

Wade Cox
Coordinator General