Sabbath 23/10/41/120
Dear Friends,
This period we are in the middle of the pagan system and we are faced with the pagan system of the birth of the Sun god Baal being presented by the virgin mother goddess emerging from the cave on the day after the Solstice when the sun begins its track to the summer. This period has nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever. We have explained the festivals in the paper Origins of Christmas and Easter (No. 235). God forbids this festival in Jeremiah 10:1-9. It was in existence long before the Babylonian Captivity after Isaiah was given his treatise by God.
Many things were added to this festival and the Romans placed their new year in the month of the god Janus as the god of beginnings and endings. He had two faces looking back to the past and forward into the future. The true new year was always centred on the Vernal equinox in the north which is in March (cf. The New Moon and the New Year (No. 213)).
Nor does the calendar of the modern Jews have anything to do with the Temple system or Original Christianity as it was not brought into existence until 358 CE. That was 328 years after the death of Christ and the establishment of the church in the Holy Spirit (cf. Hillel, Babylonian Intercalations and the Temple Calendar (No. 195C)).
If you keep the Hillel Calendar as one of the groups under the Armstrong or Dugger systems or one of those using the modern Jewish system which is virtually the same, except for Pentecost, then you have a serious problem. The fact is that you have never kept a holy day or a feast on the correct days, except by accident, in all the time you have been doing that.
Just ask yourselves this. What is the punishment for failing to keep either the Feast of Unleavened Bread or the Day of Atonement. The answer is simply that the punishment is to be cut off from your people. That means you are removed from the First Resurrection and placed in the Second Resurrection. It is that serious. The same applies to the false religions that keep Christmas and Easter and worship on Sundays.
It is not a matter of negotiating with God and postponing His Sabbaths and Holy Days. If you can postpone a Holy Day and the feasts then you can postpone the Sabbath to Sunday or another day and the logic is irrefutable.
The answer is that you cannot do that and that is why God has said in Revelation Chapter 3 that Sardis has the name that it is Living but is Dead and Laodicea is spewed out of His Mouth (cf. Pillars of Philadelphia (No. 283)). So you are judged if you are part of those systems and you are consigned to the Second Resurrection. We are required to keep the Temple Calendar (cf. God’s Calendar (No. 156)). So also was Islam corrupted in its Calendar after the death of Ali and Hussein (cf. Hebrew and Islamic Calendar Reconciled (No. 053)).
Concentrate on the faith and keep the Law and the Testimony. If you do not you will die and face the Second Resurrection and the Great White Throne Judgment (No. 143B).
The choice is yours wake up and live.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General