Sabbath 13/5/43120

Dear Friends,

The purpose of this Sabbath Message is to explain why the Two Witnesses could not be Moses and Elijah as appeared in the transfiguration of Mark chapter 9 as explained in The Transfiguration (No. 096E).  This message will be added as an Appendix A to that paper.

Appendix A.
There are some fundamental principles that show why Moses cannot appear with Elijah as the Second Witnesses and why Enoch must be the Second Witness.

There can be no doubt that the primary witness is Elijah as he is stated specifically by God to be the one sent (by God) to deal with the world in the Last Days and to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers lest God strikes the earth with a curse, as is stated through the prophet Malachi in 4:5.

The Bible is quite clear that Elijah did not die.  The Bible states, in Hebrews 9:27, that it is appointed unto all men to die once.

Moses did die and we are told that Satan struggled with Michael for the body of Moses (Jude 9). Moses therefore is dead and awaiting the First Resurrection which will not take place until four days after the Witnesses are killed. Moses therefore cannot be one of the Witnesses. The purpose of the Transfiguration therefore was not to identify the Witnesses but for another purpose associated with the roles of both Moses and Elijah and that purpose was to do with the restoration of the primary mission of Christ which was the explanation of the Laws of God and the purpose of Salvation.

Is there another patriarch or prophet that was taken in the same way that Elijah was taken?  The answer is a clear positive, and that person was the patriarch Enoch.  He was not, because God had taken him (Gen.5:24).  He was witness against the Demons before the flood and they were condemned by his witness against them for breach of the Laws of God.  It was by his witness that the ante-diluvian world was to be destroyed.  Furthermore, Enoch is the patriarch of the entire post-flood world and is therefore the best person to witness to the entire animist idolatry and ancestor worship that has spread throughout the world.  These people number some half of the world’s population.  See also Jude 14-23.

So the fact is that these two people, Enoch and Elijah, have a proven record as witnesses against the sinners of the world both of Demons and Humans and of the antinomian forces that are to be destroyed over these 1260 days of their Witness.  They are not dead but have been taken forward in time and God has specifically stated that one of them is Elijah and the other is listed in the Bible as also being taken. The reality is that the church has taught from the beginning that it was to be Enoch and Elijah.  The Churches of God have always taught that until the heresy of the Armstrong/Elijah nexus of the last half of the Twentieth century. So also Tertullian taught that the Witnesses were Enoch and Elijah. 
"Enoch no doubt was translated, and so was Elijah, nor did they experience death. It was postponed and only postponed, most certainly: they are reserved for the suffering of death, that by their blood they may extinguish the Antichrist" (Tertullian, De Anima, 50; (cf. also 135, 141D and 141E_2; 299C;  they were not translated but rather transported as the Bible states). Time travel was inconceivable to most of the early writers. Catholic prophets were also sure that Enoch and Elijah were to come as the Two Witnesses.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General