Sabbath 13/03/38/120

Dear Friends,

There are a number of strange ideas floating about now and especially among the offshoots of the UCG and LCG systems.

Because Armstrong and his ministry introduced the Hillel Calendar system from modern Judaism and told so many lies about it the membership are simply turning their backs on the Hillel System but are also turning their backs on the historical practices of the church. 

We saw a couple try to do away with the Sanctification system from the New Moon of Abib to the Seventh Day Sanctification of the Simple and Erroneous and ranted and raved when they did not succeed. They left and then they tried to introduce a change where they wanted people to hold the Lord’s Supper at the Death of the Lamb Service at 3PM on 14 Abib and eliminate the Lord’s Supper. They wrote to a number of CCG people about the matter and fortunately no one was sucked in by them.

In Germany there are also a significant number of ex-UCG people meeting together and trying to persuade our people to join them.  They wish to hold the Footwashing next year at evening 14 Abib and the Bread and Wine at 3PM 14 Abib when Christ died.  They seem to have no idea of the history of the churches of God.  That is not surprising as they were lied to by the Armstrongite ministry over many years and they don’t trust them nor do they understand their own history.

Some of the LCG people also now understand that they were lied to by the ministry over the Hillel Calendar and also the Nature of God.  They are now realising the Hillel system has postponements and did not come into existence until it was introduced by Rabbi Hillel II in 358 CE, 328 years after the death of Christ and the establishment of the Church in the Holy Spirit.  No church was taken in by their nonsense then and nor was the Church of God taken in by the fiction until Armstrong introduced it in the Twentieth Century, although they were not taken in by Sivan Six Pentecost for very long and went to Monday of all things and then finally to the Sunday.

Next year the Hillel Calendar will be a month out.  The offshoots will not only hold it on the wrong days, they will also hold it in the wrong month and these deceived individuals will also split the Lord’s Supper by holding the Footwashing on the Night of 14 Abib and the Bread and Wine on the afternoon of 14 Abib prior to the Passover Night of Observations. That is unless they come up with another strange idea before then.

The fact is that the Churches of God have always held the Lord’s Supper on the Night of 14 Abib and we know this as an historical fact. The failure of the WCG and offshoots to admit the truth and educate their people properly as to the Calendar and the Nature of God has caused this massive division in the WCG system.  They asked for it, and they got it, and they deserved it.

The gospels are clear as to what happened on the night of 14 Abib.  There is no argument as to that process. Because the WCG lied about the night of 14 Abib being the Passover and ignored the history of the church their people were able to be deceived by false teachers. 

However, Paul told them what was true and what the church was doing decades after Christ died.
Paul gave these instructions in 1 Corinthians 11:23-24:
[23] For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
[24]  and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

He repeated Christ’s instruction in verse 25:
Do this in remembrance of me, and it is clear from this verse that it is on the night of his betrayal that we have to do it as a remembrance of Christ. It is provided for in the law at Deuteronomy 16:5-8.

There is no record in the NT or in the history of the church that we have to do it at 3PM on 14 Abib. On the contrary the church has always, even when in error, as was the WCG system with the nomenclature, kept the Lord’s Supper on the night of 14 Abib when Christ was betrayed and before he was killed on the day of 14 Abib on the stauros  or stake and when he died at 3PM on 14 Abib when the lambs began to be killed.

In the entire Temple period and in two thousand years of the church the month of Abib was always determined from the New Moon Conjunction and kept on the night of 14 Abib which precedes the Passover lamb sacrifice on the day of 14 Abib. We are to be out of our gates over the three feast periods (see the paper God’s Calendar (No. 156)).

The conflict that divided the church in the Second Century was over the Quarto Deciman Passover which was kept on the Night of the 14th Abib and then also on the night of 15 Abib for the Church of God and that included all of Britain.  The Romans church brought into its ritual the Easter system of the worship of the goddess Easter or Ishtar on Friday and Sunday. No one decided to keep the Lord’s Supper at 3PM.  These disputes are covered in the paper The Quartodeciman Disputes (No. 277).  The whole church must be familiar with these disputes,

If you do not keep the Lord’s Supper correctly on the night of 14 Abib then you will not be in the First Resurrection.  Do not be deceived by these disobedient and rebellious people. These people do not speak according to the Law and Testimony.  Thus there is no light in them (Isa. 8:20).

Another indication of the errors of doctrine is the movement towards the Trinitarian system in LCG and UCG and some even into Sabellianism. We are getting people coming to CCG from these offshoots and they are simply amazed by the move into Trinitarianism caused by the Ditheist and Binitarian doctrines of LCG and UCG.  UCG is worse than LCG but they are both heretical and not Biblical Unitarian (see the paper Binitarian and Trinitarian Misuse of the Early Theology of the Godhead (No. 127B)).

Next year in 2016 the Babylonian intercalations in Hillel will place them a month out so they will get nothing right.  Basically you are not allowed to keep the Calendar unless you have the Godhead correct. That is why the WCG and Offshoot systems were never correct.  The History of the Churches of God can be seen in the papers General Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No. 122) and the Role of the Fourth Commandment in the Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170).

They are trying to lure our people into the errors they themselves have invented or borrowed from other false teachers.  Tell them the truth then get away from them so you are not led into error and heresy by them. We know what is required of us and we do it so as to be accounted worthy to attain the First Resurrection and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Do not be deceived by them.  God is separating the wheat from the tares and they are being removed from among us.  The next step for them is to face the Witnesses when they arrive (see the paper The Witnesses (including the Two Witnesses) (No. 135)).

Wade Cox
Coordinator General