Sabbath 26/11/37/120

Dear Friends,

The UCG produced an internet paper called “Who are the Two Witnesses?: yet not once did they name them. Not once did they explore what God said about them through His servants the prophets.

They said the following which is of importance and we need to examine just what the Witnesses do and say in relation to the faith.

Two men will represent the Almighty. God calls them "My witnesses." They'll bring His message and do His will. As they begin God's case against this world, they'll also fulfill the role of prophet.
Yet on the other hand, two other men will lead the world in the opposite direction of God. Most people will mistakenly fall for this great corrupt leader, his evil political system and a counterfeit religious power. Now imagine the level of deceit! Revelation says: "All who dwell on the earth will worship him,…" (Revelation:13:8).

However are the Churches of God even in a position to identify that what the Witnesses say and do is in accordance to the word of God? These groups do not themselves even recognise the laws of God in relation to worship and what they are themselves required to do in regard to the laws of God and the fake witnesses that will be set up by the Jews themselves to create a false Messiah.

The UCG view is stated as follows:

“Well here it is - straight from the Word of God, straight from His Bible: "One of your people, claiming to be a prophet or to have prophetic dreams, may predict a miraculous sign or an amazing thing. What he predicts may even take place. But don't listen to that prophet or dreamer if he says, 'Let's worship and serve other gods.' (Those gods may be gods you've never heard of.) The Lord your God is testing you to find out if you really love him with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deuteronomy:13:1-3, GW).”

However, what is the track record of the WCG and the offshoots like UCG and LCG, RCG, PCG and others of speaking to the law and the Testimony?  It is not very good unfortunately.

The Bible is quite clear that unless they speak according to the law and the Testimony there is no light in them (Isaiah 8:20). 

How will Judaism and the Offshoots of the Churches of God know who the prophets are?  God tells us who one of them is by name.  In the last text of the OT Canon He says through the prophet Malachi (4:4-6): Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel with the statues and judgments. Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

So one of these people will be Elijah the prophet.  They will speak according to the law and the testimony.  Who has the church taught would be the Two Witnesses over the centuries?  They have always taught that they would be Enoch and Elijah.  These aspects are covered in the paper The Witnesses (including the Two Witnesses) (No. 135).

What Scriptural basis did the churches of God have for asserting that the Witnesses would be Enoch and Elijah?  Firstly God says that it is appointed unto all men once to die and these two men did not die; they were both taken by God in the Merkabah Chariot of Fire (Gen. 5:21-24; 2Kgs. 2:11-12).  Now the Churches of God have always known that these two prophets were to stand against the world in the last days.  Enoch, because he is the ancestor of all men alive and thus has authority over the families of the earth and
is witness against the antediluvian world and the Fallen Host by whom they were condemned.  The second of the two was specifically named as the prophet of the last days.  These two prophets are the golden lampstands that stand before Satan, the god of this earth (2Cor. 4:4).

The Worldwide Church of God and all their ministry taught publicly for decades that Herbert W Armstrong was himself Elijah.  These ministers still hold office in the offshoots.  Their false teaching is exposed in the papers Elijah? (No. 233) and False Prophecy (No. 269).  By the standards of Scripture Herbert W Armstrong was the greatest False Prophet ever to hold office in the Churches of God.  There is in fact a third voice in the last days and he is specified as being from Dan/Ephraim in Jeremiah 4:15-16 and he warns directly of the coming of the Messiah and also necessarily of the Witnesses. However, the voice is not from the US but rather from the Commonwealth and thus the prophecy in Jeremiah is ignored except by the Catholic prophets and the early oracles who refer to it/him as the Danite AntiChrist who comes from an Israelite country to the east of Jerusalem between two seas (see also the paper Warning of the Last Days (No. 044) .  The Danite Antichrist is also referred to in the papers One Throne Two Pretenders (No. 026);  Measuring the Temple (No. 137); and Christ and the Koran (No. 163).

Will the UCG and the other offshoots be able to recognise the false Messiah to be set up by the Jews in order to justify the construction of the Temple and False Prophet to be placed in Jerusalem?  The answer is clearly no, they will not be able to do so.  The obvious reason is that under Herbert Armstrong they were induced to keep the false calendar set up by the Jews, firstly under Rabbi Hillel II in 358 CE and adjust on into the Twelfth Century under Maimonides.  They still keep Hillel and knowingly use it and deceive the brethren of the offshoots as to its origins. When the Witnesses get here they will already have a false prophet in Judah teaching Hillel and when they demand the Temple Calendar be kept these false teachers of Hillel in Judah and the Churches of God will oppose them and tell their flocks that Elijah and Enoch are fakes.

Enoch and Elijah will have power of the heavens and over rain and lightning and many of these people will be killed by drought and famine and lightning over the 1263.5 days.

For many of these false teachers of the offshoots it will be too late when the Messiah is here and they have not repented and many of the brethren will be consigned to the Second Resurrection due to their false teachings and ignorance of Bible Prophecy. Only individuals of the Sardis and Laodicean systems will survive by repenting before the coming of the Messiah.  If they follow these false teachers they will go to the Second Resurrection through their negligence and that of their teachers. The problem is explained in the paper The Pillars of Philadelphia (No. 283).

It is true that the people of Israel and the priests and prophets in particular sawed Isaiah in half because he would not speak lies to them but spoke the truth.  He was indeed a true prophet of God.
So also the priests and prophets killed Zechariah between the Altar and the Temple.  It is the priests that teach for hire that resist the truth and it is these same priests that teach God’s people to keep a false calendar to this very day and that includes the Churches of God.

Truly these minsters who teach for hire are quoted thus:
 "They tell the seers, 'Stop seeing visions!' They tell the prophets, 'Don't tell us what is right. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies.'"(Isaiah:30:10, NLT).
The people listening to Isaiah didn't want to hear from God. They would rather hear lies, even knowing that they are lies! Isn't it fair to say that the same attitude is here - right now? (Quoted from the UCG text).

It is true that a messenger of God and a godly prophet will tell people the truth about God’s laws and His system and what He expects.  Yet this year one of their ministers told a member that he could not tell people the truth about Hillel or they would know they were keeping the wrong calendar or words to that effect.  They lie and they and their people are dying because of those lies and their loss of the power of healing.

It is true that “The world's reaction will be just like their response to another one of God's prophets. They said: "We will not listen to your messages from the Lord! We will do whatever we want. (Jeremiah:44:16, NLT).” That is because they are taught lies by their ministry to this very day.  The false prophet and the Antichrist that leads the world’s systems will be given much assistance by the ministry that will do anything but what God, through His prophets, tells them to do.

We will see what happens when these fat capons are confronted with the power of the beast. Most of the world bows to it and the false system but the falsehood is not simply from there.  It lives and breathes among the Churches of God keeping the false Hillel Calendar and worshipping a false Ditheist or Binitarian God from the worship of Attis of the First and Second Century in Rome.

"They worshiped the dragon who had given its authority to the beast. They also worshiped the beast and said, 'No one is like this beast! No one can fight against it.' The beast was allowed to brag and claim to be God, and for forty-two months it was allowed to rule. The beast cursed God, and it cursed the name of God. It even cursed the place where God lives…" (Revelation:13:4-6, CEV). (see the paper WWIII Part I: The Empire of the Beast (No. 299A)).

What did Jeremiah say of these people? "The prophets speak lies, and the priests take power into their own hands, and my people love it this way. But what will you do when the end comes?" (Jeremiah:5:31, NCV).

That is the question. What will you do?
The fact truly is – “the end of this age will be littered with spiritual and religious deception. Only a few will understand what's really going on. The only way to be prepared and avoid deception is to strengthen your relationship with God your Father right now.”

They ask the question “Is it possible that you could already be set up for deception? Do you think that counterfeit religion will only appear at the end?” Oh yes it is truly spoken that the false prophets have led God’s people astray through the last two jubilees and the people are unwilling to see them for what they are. Not once in 2014 or 2015 or 2016 will the Hillel Calendar be correct and only twice in those three years will they even get Pentecost correct, and not one other Holy Day correct. In 2016 they will not even get any of the feasts even in the correct month.

Wade Cox