Sabbath Message by Wade Cox

Feast of Tabernacles 28/120


Dear Friends,


This Sabbath 14/7/28/120 is Ingathering for the Feast of Tabernacles in the civil calendar year 2005. We are all gathered together in our various locations around the world. Some of us are ill or unable to travel large distances. Please spare a thought for those people and try to make their Feast a little more pleasant in some way or another.

The importance of preparing for the Feasts should be obvious to everyone. We take the second tithe and plan and save for these feasts. In the Sabbath Year we have to do what we can to make the Church function and get to the feasts and help others. So we have to be organised and to plan well ahead.

This year we will be covering the Reading of the Law, which is published on the web site at Law of God (L1). After the Feast the reading will be on the web as taped sermons. It is already on the web in some other languages, for example Russian.

Our reading is complete by the Last Great Day, which is a feast in its own right and on that day the Law is not read, but rather the coming Kingdom of God and the Resurrection of the Dead are discussed. We will end the Feast on the explanation of the City of God.

The understanding of the Church is critical to the carrying out of its role as the body of Christ. By not reading the Law each Sabbath Year, as we are commanded under the Law of God, the Church loses its understanding of the underpinning structure of the society and the direction of the Church within the Plan of God. The Church thus waxes and wanes in understanding dependent upon its capacity to study the Law and the teachings of the Bible concerning that Law. Some even come to completely lose their understanding by failing to comply with this most important aspect of the Calendar of God.

I have seen pastors of the Church of God give sermons doing away with the Law of God. Of course, they don’t do away with it; they simply bring themselves under judgment. The leaders often die when they make such pronouncements, as some of us have seen not so long ago.

The Law of God is a causal relationship that controls the universe. Satan, as the god of this world, broke the nexus between the Law and the creation here on earth when he rebelled, and the consequences for the planet have been accruing ever since.

The Witnesses will restore the nexus of the Law (see the paper The Witnesses (No. 135)), when they commence to speak in Jerusalem in the not too distant future. Their work will be very important to the planet and to the faith. Much attention will be drawn to what is said and done by them at that time. When it is restored the situation will get worse before it gets better. There will be a direct and observable consequence to sin.

The world is getting more violent and more complex as it progresses down the track of this materialist society. The controls being exercised over everyone and everything by this New World Order is an insidious process that most people are being convinced is simply necessary and good for their security.

The Calendar will also be a casualty of the new social structure. The society will not close down and the week will become an anachronism. People will work and be rostered off as it suits the society, and there will be no day devoted to the study of God and His Word or to His worship.

That will force a crisis in the Church. At that time many will see the situation and the Sabbath will be the focus of attention for many, and also those outside of the Churches of God.

How long it will be allowed to continue before God directly intervenes will only be visibly evident when the Witnesses take up their positions. Then we know precisely the time frame before the return of the Messiah.

Until then, we are charged with working hard and getting on with the job and publishing the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.

During this Feast encourage one another. Encourage the children and educate them with the vision of the coming Kingdom of God. It is too easy to dwell on the negatives of the modern world and miss the positive aspects of the Restoration.

It is not all doom and gloom but rather a process of change, which will see us emerge at the other side of the crisis with a new and better world that will require a lot of rebuilding but will usher in an era of unsurpassed peace.

Look forward to the new era and use this time to prepare all of us for the family of God in the millennial system.

The children that are not baptised will all be able to play a part in the new system as kings and priests in the society that emerges and they have to be prepared to undertake those roles by sound education and ethical principles that will serve them in good stead.

Encourage everyone to get as educated and qualified as we can, not for the sake of this worlds riches but rather for the good of our society and the Church in the new system.

Those of you at home and perhaps by yourselves know that you are not alone. The Holy Spirit and the blessings of the Church are with you all.

Everyone should use this Feast to show that we love one another and thereby demonstrate that we love God.


Wade Cox

Coordinator General

 

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