Feast Message Tabernacles 30/120

Dear Friends,

By now you will all be at the Feast except for the ones too old or infirm to attend. We try to make it possible for you all to have a pleasant and comfortable Feast no matter where you are. We are meant to dwell in booths and to make booths of palm fronds and branches during the Feast season. Wherever we are we should make such a booth for the Feast to remind us of this requirement and to inform the young.

Those of you who are from the cold countries know what the effect would be on our aged and infirm should we make our people simply live in these booths on a continual basis for the full Feast. Anyone in Alaska or Canada or Iceland or in the US North East knows what can happen in inclement weather in those areas. Scotland can also be bitterly cold. When wet, the Feast can be deadly. It has snowed in some Feasts.

The restoration at Jerusalem will see these booths made and erected. Judah still makes these booths for the Feast period and Jews come from all over the world to be there, but they do not all sleep in them on a continual basis; and Jerusalem is over 23 parallels further towards the equator than many of these others areas we speak of.

The Church under Christ and the Apostles did not insist that we all keep Tabernacles in such a manner. Nor have the elders or bishops of the Church ever forced that situation on people. People who are fit enough can camp in tents. There is, however, a legal obligation placed on the Church to make sure that the old and infirm are not exposed to the sort of conditions that might cause death or illness through forcing such circumstances on them. National Conferences are to be mindful of these problems when selecting Feast sites.

I was informed by our US officers that many years ago a Feast site was selected in New York, which was an open Amphitheatre, and the brethren literally froze during services there – and that was not at night. They never used it again. During the persecutions we simply could not gather in such obvious ways, and over the 2000 years the Church has never insisted that the members live only in palm fronds.

I remember sitting in a large marquee tent in Canada giving a sermon in 1997 with thunder and lightning and torrential rain coming down and water seeping in under the tent and almost reaching the electric cords for the wiring. Had we been in branches we would have all been soaked and many of the old people would have suffered seriously.

So, yes, do erect the booths where the legislation permits it. You can do it within your auditoriums at your Feasts for the children and to fulfil the Law. However, do not think that because you live in a warmer climate and can sleep in a booth that you are more righteous than all God’s people that have gone before you – those keeping the Feasts and enduring persecution and hardship and who have lost employment over the Sabbaths, New Moons and Feasts.

They made it possible for you to be called into the Church in the first place. These elderly grey heads dotted around you should be respected and encouraged and not made to feel inadequate because of your self-righteousness.

This is a Feast of the Lord God. Eat the fat and drink the sweet and rejoice in the gifts of the Lord God.

May God bless your trips to and from the Feast sites. Remember, the protection of God is upon you as you go and return.

On another note, it is now established by scientists how the Earth became Tohu and Bohu (without form and void) and swathed in darkness, as we are told in Genesis 1:1-2.

Reuters have just reported, on September 6 2007, that scientists have found that two asteroids collided in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. They allege it was 160 million years ago and the asteroids then drifted to Earth some 65 million years ago. That is, however, dependent upon accepted evolutionary chronology. The meteorite was some 10 km wide and struck the Yucatan peninsula and eliminated the dinosaurs that had allegedly existed for the previous 165 million years. It wiped out many other life forms and paved the way for the ascendancy of the mammals and human domination. The Bible of course tells us a different story and simply says the Earth became without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep.

The ensuing catastrophe would have expelled rock and debris into the atmosphere and caused giant tsunamis and darkness over the Earth for a long time.

One of the two asteroids was approximately 170 km wide and the other was about 60 km wide and they collided about 180 million km from the Earth. The asteroid Baptistina and the rubble associated with it are thought to have been the leftovers of the collision. The meteorites were the remnants that tumbled into the inner solar system, colliding with the Earth and the moon and also with Mars and Venus, according to William Boltke of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The report is in that week’s issue of the journal, Nature.

That collision was then used to implement the Plan of God with the creation of Adam.

Have a great Feast as we study the plan and the spread of mankind over the Earth, in accordance with the Plan of God.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General