Sabbath 14/2/42/120

Dear Friends,

Our coordinator in Scandinavia who is a doctor and surgeon wrote to me about the last Sabbath Message.

“Hello Wade
Just a little comment on what you wrote about this rugby player and his stand on homosexuality. Here in Norway, several years ago a young " christian " man came out as homosexual and he was used very much by the media to break down resistance against it. He wrote a book with a lot of silly arguments, among which were one or two that were not so silly - in the same vein as you are mentioning. He wrote about the Sabbath and rightly maintained that Christianity had abandoned it and substituted it with one day of its own liking. Also he mentioned the food laws. So, since Christianity clearly does not heed these commandments, on what authority hang the rest?
And he is right. Had the christian community been keeping all of God’s commandments, we could have had a much stronger stand on this. But since, at the root of Christianity, there lies a utilitarian attitude, why not also in these matters? With modern medicine and divers protective measures that reduces risk ( after all: heterosexuality is not without risk either, they allege ) why not let "love" reign as freely as possible? What then is the problem with it when two persons "love each other"? 
And also, it is true: only God can define what is right and wrong. When we discuss things, in the end we will need the absolute standard.  The way of life is to do the commandments of God, whether we understand them or not. And that is the ultimate Christian argument. God condemns just as heavily eating of unclean animals as homosexuality. Both are abominable in his sight. That is not so easy to grasp for one who is brought up on swine flesh on Christmas.
Arne”

So it is true also that these pseudo Christians have spent centuries trying to suppress the truth of the Bible doctrines and teaching. The Sunday worshippers headed by the RC church are trying to stop the development of the Bible Truth in Africa where it is growing mightily now.  Our coordinator in Namibia and also our attorneys in East Africa are telling us of the various attempts at suppressing the original Bible doctrines and the churches teaching them.  We have suffered these forms of persecution for almost 2000 years. The major problem has been that the latest heresies have occurred within the Churches of God themselves fostered by false prophets and their False Prophecy (No. 269) and a thieving ministry that has plundered the brethren for over a century.

This week at a function a relative by marriage in another COG came to me and discussed the false doctrine being taught there of the Third Resurrection and she had read our paper the Fallacy of the Third Resurrection (No. 166). She was simply stunned by the sheer heresy of the doctrine and that it was an instrument of control invented by Armstrong and designed to control the brethren. It is an imputation against the Nature of God and His Omniscience and, what is even more amazing, that the people do not even see the enormous heresy in the doctrine. Nor also do they see the errors in the doctrine of the Place of Safety (No. 194). Nor also do they see the insanity of placing the Oracles of God (No. 184) with the heretical Jews who were sent into dispersion after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.  They do not seem to realise that the Churches of God under Armstrong and the offshoots have never kept a Holy Day on the correct days except by sheer accident since Armstrong introduced the heresy of the Hillel Calendar of 358 CE into the Sardis system in the 1940s. If one can postpone the Lord’s Supper and the Holy Days and Atonement then why can one not postpone the Sabbath to Sunday? The answer is that one cannot do any of those things and those that do and teach those errors are in the Second Resurrection to be retaught. Be patient and keep praying for them and teach them as the need arises. Remember the injunction and prayer: Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General