Sabbath Message 14/02/38/120
Dear Friends,
God set up a system to deal with sin in the human creation as well as in the Heavenly Host. Due to His divine Prescience He understood that Man would sin and that there had to be a system of Salvation set up to deal with that process.
The word sin is defined as acting contrary to the laws of God (1Jn. 3:4); and the word sin was derived from the idolatrous worship of the Moon God Sin in the Akkadian and Babylonian systems (see the paper The Golden Calf (No. 222)). He is symbolized to this day by the crescent moon and his worshippers have inserted the crescent into the forms of Temple worship, into Islam and into the Calendar by false construction and false interpretation. The Temple Calendar is explained in the paper God’s Calendar (No. 156) and also in the Hebrew and Islamic Calendar Reconciled (No. 053).
We saw that the process of sin would be introduced through the Heavenly Host at the highest levels of the Covering Cherubs. We saw also in the plan of God that the instrument of salvation had to come from both levels and one of the Elohim, or Sons of God, had to become a man and die both for the Heavenly Host and the Human Host that was corrupted by them. This was the Angel of the Presence that was the elohim of Israel who was to become Jesus Christ (Gen. 48:15-16; Ps. 45:6-7; Heb. 1:8-9). In that way they could all become Sons of God as elohim (see Jn. 10:34-36 and the Elect as Elohim (No. 001)). This means of salvation had to come from the Highest levels of the elohim and he was taken from one of the core thousand of the sons of God (Job. 1:6, 2:1, 33:23).
This being termed Satan or Lucifer introduced corruption to mankind through its religion. He did it through all religions in the world.
He penetrated Israel and introduced Baal Worship there with the consort Ashtoreth in the Hebrew or Ishtar or Astarte in the Chaldean or Easter in the Anglo-Saxon. These cults of the Sun God and Mystery Cults were to be a thorn in the side of the faith of Israel and the Churches of God over three and one half thousand years. They became the religions of the world and were known as Mystery Babylon in the faith.
Their adherents have taught against the laws of God for millennia and try to destroy obedience to God’s laws. The ceremonial laws all pointed to Christ as Messiah and the final sacrifice. Antinomianism taught against the laws of God (anti-nomos is against the law). Binitarianism of the Sun Cults was imported into Christianity as Binitarianism and then as Trinitarianism in 381 CE at the Council of Constantinople. This led to the Unitarian Trinitarian wars (No. 268). The Churches of God had been persecuted over the two millennia of the church in the wilderness. Antinomianism was used to destroy the churches with the worship of the God Attis. This process was explained in the papers Antinomian Destruction of Christianity by Misuse of Scripture (No. 164C); Antinomian Attacks on the Law of God (No. 164D); Antinomian Denial of Baptism (No. 164E) and Binitarian and Trinitarian Misrepresentation of the Early Theology of the Godhead (No. 127B).
The sequence was to destroy the Unitarian structure of scripture and then the structure of the Calendar and then undermine the theology of the Churches of God. That was carried out over the last two millennia with ruthless attack. It had not resulted in the success of the Roman Catholic church and so the demons were forced to conduct the Reformation and it was in this process that the Fifth system or the Sardis system was formed. They forced the Reformation under the Thyatiran system and then the Churches of God under Sardis simply died when the Reformation occurred.
We also knew that through the Revelation of God to Jesus Christ written by John that the last two eras, Sardis and the Laodicean, would sin and be rejected from the First Resurrection and sent to the Second Resurrection, and that a smaller more theologically correct era would have to be established to restore the true faith in the last days before the Two Witnesses (Rev. 3:1-22). These aspects have been covered in the papers Heaven, Hell or the First Resurrection of the Dead (No. 143A); The Second Resurrection of the Dead and the Great White Throne Judgment (No. 143B); The Pillars of Philadelphia (No. 283); and The Witnesses (Including the Two Witnesses) (No. 135).
When God set up the sacrificial system under Moses it was to point to the Temple and the system in Israel that was to bring the people to Christ under the law when he was sent at the end of the Physical Temple system. He was to set up a system that would enable the Holy Spirit to be placed in the individual on Repentance and Baptism and the laying on of hands as a repentant adult. They were then brought into the Churches of God as the Temple of God over the Forty Jubilees in the Wilderness.
The concept was that freedom from sin was through baptism as it had been through sacrifice. After Christ had been sacrificed for us then there was no more offering for sin and the only criteria was the ceremony of the Lord’s Supper every year on the beginning of 14 Abib and then the Feast of Unleavened Bread from the Passover night of 15 Abib for seven days.
The antinomians attacked the Godhead and then also the calendar and the Sabbaths of God. They attacked baptism by making it a meaningless ritual confined to infants when the law demands that only an adult of twenty years can be made part of the Army of Israel, which are the soldiers of Christ (see the paper Deuteronomy 20 (No. 201)).
When a repentant adult was baptized and had hands laid on them for the Holy Spirit their sins were put as far as the East is from the West. Their sins were to be brought to mind no more (see the papers Repentance and Baptism (No. 052) and Born Again (No. 172)).
They covenanted to obey God’s Laws and to keep His calendar and that involved keeping the right days in accordance with the Heavens as set out from the outset and as kept in accordance with the Temple Calendar.
Sin was forgiven by the grace of God in Christ but that grace was retained through obedience. All men sin and anyone who says he is without sin is a liar as we see from the writings of John and also James where faith without works is dead (Jas. 2:14, 17-18).
Unless we ate the body and drank the blood of Christ at the Lord’s Supper we had no part in him.
It is as a consequence that we confess our sins and that we are forgiven our sins by God through the Holy Spirit.
The principle on which repentance and forgiveness depends in the church under the laws of God is that we are not the accusers of the brethren and we have no business or right to accuse any baptized member of the faith of any sin accept where it be established in the mouth of two witnesses. Sins committed before baptism are as far as the East is from the West and they are to be brought to mind no more. A classic example is the fact that Paul was an accuser of the brethren, a murderer and a torturer, before he was baptized and he was made a bishop of the church and an apostle.
In the Last Days of the Churches of God we see the Sardis Church end with its self declared demarcation by naming the last of its offshoots as the Living Church of God as prophesied in Revelation 3:1 where it has the name that it is “living” but it is dead. This prophecy was fulfilled in 1997 with the formation of the Living Church of God. Prior to that there had never been a Living Church of God in history.
At the end of 1995 the United Church of God was formed at the disintegration of the Worldwide Church of God from 1994. In 1994 the Christian Churches of God were formed from the declaration of the Trinitarian structure in WCG. It was the CCG that restored the doctrines of the Churches of God as they had been at the end of the Thyatiran era and as had been practised by the few faithful branches such as the Caldwell Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day) in the US in the first half of the 20th century (see also the papers General Distribution of the Sabbath-keeping Churches (No 122) and Role of the Fourth Commandment in the Historical Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (No. 170)).
In 1987 the head of WCG declared that the Temple of God was to be measured and it was over the Sabbatical structure of 1987-1994 beginning and ending in Third years of the cycle as is traditional for the Churches of God.
The measurement was to continue over the final forty years of the 120th Jubilee from 1987-2027 when the nations will be brought into subjection to Christ and the nation of Judah will be brought to repentance and baptism.
The church itself was formed from the Jubilee of 27 CE but was not given the Holy Spirit until after the Sacrifice of Christ from Passover at 30 CE which was a Third year of the cycle. The Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost 30 CE.
When the RCG/WCG was formed it was formed by Herbert W. Armstrong under the greatest heresies to enter the Churches of God.
By and large each of the offshoots still retain most of these heresies and the UCG has added even more heresies under its ministry through sheer ignorance than any other offshoot.
The heresies concern firstly the most serious which is the doctrine on the nature of God. Armstrong came into the COG with no theological or philosophical training whatsoever. As a result he was, for a while, silent on the nature of God but began to develop a doctrine which was inherently Ditheist (see the paper Ditheism (No. 076B)).
However, no formal training was formulated throughout the Radio Church of God (RCG) and then the WCG. As a result many of the ministry were left to formulate their own views and they drifted into Binitarianism and then Trinitarianism and then back to Protestantism (see the papers Binitarianism and Trinitarianism (No. 076)). Also some of the groups invented Radical Unitarianism which denies the Pre-existence of Jesus Christ (No. 243) and which is outlined in the paper Origins of Radical Unitarianism and Binitarianism (No. 076C).
The 20th century also brought new doctrinal changes which are outlined in Effects of the 20th Century Churches of God on the nature of God (No. 076D).
Many of the people in the Churches of God had truly rejected the Trinity and were Biblical Unitarians but as discussion was limited the confusion was rampant with Ditheist ideas and the illogical consequences of those doctrines were often seen.
The result was that in any given group a divergence could be found and in the UCG particularly it was seen to occur that a group of six senior ministers once could and did get arguments with Radical Unitarian, Ditheist, Binitarian, Trinitarian and Biblical Unitarian views, and sometimes a confusion of two or three of the above.
The Temple Calendar had been kept by the Churches of God over the previous 1900 years. In the Sardis system many of the Churches of God kept only the Sabbath and the Lord’s Supper. Armstrong wished to develop the Feast system but simply was not educated enough to understand the original Temple system. Instead he seized on the Jewish or Hillel Calendar not realizing it did not come into existence until 358 CE, 328 years after the death of Christ, and had been rejected not only by all the Churches of God but by the Binitarians also as they had been keeping the Temple Calendar system by the calculation of the New Moons from the conjunction since the end of the Temple period and then by the Trinitarians from 381 CE. The difference on the determination of the Passover sequence was the Quartodeciman Passover and the Easter system. Armstrong understood none of that history (see the papers The Quartodeciman Disputes (No. 277) and The Origins of Christmas and Easter (No. 235)).
There was a book written by Rabbi Kohn Chief Rabbi at Buda and Pest in 1894 (Die Sabbatarier in Siebenburgen) translated by an officer of UCG but he deliberately omitted a key element of the work that he did translate from the German and left the main body untouched. The part he omitted showed that the entire church was keeping the New Moons according to the conjunction as part of their calendar. CCG as a result of this outrageous scholarship had the entire work translated by McElwain and Rook and wrote a foreword on the work with a glossary by Rook and published it as Kohn-Cox, The Sabbatarians in Transylvania (CCG 1998).
The work shows absolutely that the church did not keep Hillel and did not keep Rosh Hashanah as the beginning of the Year because it did not enter Judaism until the Third century and Kohn admitted that this was the original Christian faith which preceded the Jewish calendar.
WCG and the offshoots could not afford to make such an admission as they would have to restore the New Moons and the Calendar.
Because of the Babylonian intercalations in Hillel the Jews and thus the WCG and its offshoots have rarely kept a Holy Day on the correct days and often they keep the feasts in the wrong months.
The punishment for this sin is consignment to the Second Resurrection and they do not get it and they are prepared to lie about it to conceal the truth from their brethren.
The next heresy is that they have continually presented Armstrong as a prophet in spite of his litany of false prophecy (False Prophecy No. 269)). Not only were they prepared to advance the false prophecy they also declared that he was Elijah foretold by the prophet Malachi (Mal. 4:5-6). These aspects are dealt with in the papers Elijah? (No. 233) and also Commentary on Malachi (No. 021L).
Armstrong was a plagiarist of the most extraordinary extent plagiarizing the work of G.G. Rupert and also J. Allen’s work Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright which he published as The US and BC in Prophecy and which the ministry of the offshoots deliberately pushed for decades both in WCG and in the offshoots as Armstrong’s work and they still condone and participate in this fraud to this day.
The Constitution of the RCG/WCG was deliberately done away with by fraud in the 1970s and the WCG was vested in the sole ownership of Armstrong in what was without doubt the greatest corporate theft of all time in the history of the Churches of God.
Never once in our interaction with the WCG and offshoots system has any of CCG officers and members ever encountered an intellectually honest appraisal of any argument or position that ran counter to Armstrong’s propaganda. The use of ad hominem attacks was and still is, to this day, used by the offshoots to control the attacks on others in defamation rather than deal with any criticism or problems in an honest way.
The brethren were taught the use of defamation as a constant weapon. The ministry used the process to divide and rule the brethren in each of the churches. It has continued to such an extent that the brethren do not even realise they are in breach of the laws of God on a continual basis and that their system is in a seriously heretical structure and with doctrines that will prohibit their entry to the First Resurrection. Further, making a railing accusation against a person without being one of two witnesses to the event is defamation and forbidden. You shall not follow a multitude to do evil, neither shall you speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment (Ex. 23:2). See the paper Law and the Ninth Commandment (No. 262).
For reasons of control Armstrong also invented the Place of Safety Doctrine (see the paper The Place of Safety (No. 194)) and also The Third Resurrection (see the paper The Fallacy of the Third Resurrection (No. 166)).
Both of these fallacies were invented to convince people that a it was safer to stay in WCG and that if you left it you face destruction in the “Third Resurrection” in which you were resurrected to be killed and thrown into the Lake of Fire. Such a view imputes sin to God and is totally unbiblical.
Armstrong also invented two third tithes and falsified the Tithe Doctrine (see the paper Tithing (No. 161)).
Rehabilitation
The only way that the Churches of God can enter the First Resurrection is to repent and to restore the true doctrines of the Churches of God and purge their systems of the heresies involved in the WCG and to restore their government by constitution among the brethren.
They have to truly repent and to restore the truth in order to assume their place in the First Resurrection at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (see the papers Truth (No. 168) and Trumpets (No. 136)).
The sins of the elect are put behind us at baptism and again each year at the Lord’s Supper at the Foot-washing. It has been seen that some brethren who have washed one another’s feet for twenty five to thirty years can still make railing accusations against their brethren. That is in spite of having washed their feet for up to thirty years previously and numerous times after the event for which they make railing accusations. These people need to be re-taught. Their eternal lives are in serious jeopardy.
If you have not forgiven your brethren then God has not forgiven you and you need to get that through your head.
Remember the Omer Count to Pentecost is to remind us all of what it is from which we came out, and we are being prepared for the ascent to Trumpets as foretold by the Ascents of Moses (No. 070) and for the First Resurrection of the Dead. Love your neighbor as yourself and show thereby that you love God. Forgive those who offend you so that you may be forgiven. Defame no one for that is forbidden to you under the law. Reject the ministry that would teach you otherwise.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General