New Moon 1/6/28/120 and Sabbath 2/6/28/120
Dear Friends,
This week we enjoy the New Moon and Sabbath back to back and so we are blessed
with a long weekend in that regard.
This month is the one before the feast of Trumpets, Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. In order for us to fully appreciate the sequence of activity, we should look at the paper The Ascents of Moses (No. 70). We should also appreciate the fact that in this month God brings about many new changes in our lives, and old things come to a halt, and new things open up. Not all those changes are for what we might think is the good. As a rule, however, all things work to the good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). God works His purpose out through us. He predestines us before our birth and calls us to the faith, and then justifies us and then glorifies us in that justification and through our salvation. So then, there is nothing and no spirit that can stand against God’s predestination. If God is for us, who can be against us? (cf. Rom. 8:29-32). It is God who prepares all things for us.
Do not be discouraged because we are tried and do not be worn down in the cares of the world. People speak of employees being burnt out, but also we can allow ourselves to be burnt out in these matters.
Look towards the feast with joy and thanksgiving. Look towards being with one another at this great time and in this Sabbath Year.
Some of us will be faced with new work and changes in our lives involving relocations, and also decisions and judgments and new directions sometimes foisted on us, seemingly by events beyond our control.
Remember this text in Romans regarding all things working together for the good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. It is His purpose and not ours that determines the good of the faith and the directions we take. It is said that what does not kill you makes you stronger. Perhaps that is so, but as a rule trials strengthen us and we grow in grace and understanding.
Sometimes the changes we experience involve the loss of loved ones. We must bear up under all these trials. Those of us that have lost, or are losing loved ones, will see them in either the First or the Second Resurrections. All will come to know the glory of God. Each of us will have our opportunity at salvation in our own time. Only the uninformed are lost in the prospect of a heaven or hell.
Some of us have to go to remote places and work when others are able to go and have fun in other places with less work to do. All of us study the Laws of God and all of us do what we are given to do as well as we are able. Please pray for our missionaries and the tasks they are given to do. Their teaching duties this year are great and important to the establishment of the Church. There appears to be an emphasis on the establishment in East and Central Africa. Pray also that each of us is able to get to the Reading of the Law in the places that God has chosen to establish through the Church.
It is hard for each of us to comply with the Law of God in most countries we are in. These days those who keep the Law make themselves a prey for those who do not. In previous centuries Satan used the established churches to persecute anyone trying to actually do what the Bible said. Those churches used any pretext not to do what God said. They kept Sunday instead of the Sabbath. They kept Christmas and Easter instead of the true feasts of God. They taught the Triune God instead of the One True God and His Son Jesus Christ in true relationship. They then killed anyone who could and did read the Bible and follow it.
Now Satan has replaced them. Today the economy is replacing the so-called Christians as well as the Bible following zealots. Soon the entire social structure of the world will be rewritten so that God’s Calendar will be virtually impossible to keep and maintain a career. That is happening on a daily basis and we have reports of the changes also almost daily. We do what we can while it is possible to follow the system God has laid down through His servants the Prophets.
Everyone on the planet has a reason why they do not have to follow the Bible. Trinitarian Christians will tell you that the Law is done away and no one has to keep the Law of God. One merely has to call on Jesus and love one another, and join their particular denomination but don’t proselytise nowadays. Muslims will tell you that the Bible has been lost and so no one can keep the Laws of God. Their view of God is strange indeed. A god that loses his own instruction book can hardly be the One True God. A god that changes his mind can also hardly be the One True God. Buddhists also worship a multiplicity of spirits and then say there is no God. There is only escape from existence, which is the Nirvana they espouse. It is a road that leads to oblivion. Hinduism has a multiplicity of competing gods and an endless cycle of existence until the last great age of the last reincarnation of the god that destroys the world (cf. Mysticism, CCG Publishing 2005).
God either exists or He does not exist. He either instructed His servants the prophets or He did not instruct them. Islam either follows the instructions of its founder or it does not. The Koran either follows the Bible or it does not. If it does not, then it cannot be complying with the claims of its founder. Christianity either follows the Bible and the Prophets or it does not. Christ said: Scripture cannot be broken. Muhammad said Christ was the Messiah sent by God, and an inspired prophet of God. Thus, Christ is right and Scripture cannot be broken, or both he and Muhammad are liars. Judaism claims to follow the Bible yet turns the Law of God on its head with the Talmud. All agree that there is one root faith and it was given by God to the Prophets, yet no one of the mainstream systems follows it except for a small band of people who are battered by the people professing to follow God, precisely because they do follow the Laws of God, albeit with error and sin snapping at their heels.
Do not be discouraged and look to helping the brethren to be as one in the faith.
What do we look forward to in this regard? Encourage one another and know that God will give us a way out of the mess. In the darkest time he will deliver us as he delivered Israel from Egypt. When the system is at its most unbearable, He will provide a means of escape. Be encouraged and have faith.
The changes that you will experience over the next month leading up to and from the Feast will lead to new ways of learning and helping one another. Use the Feast to rest from the hard labour of your work and grow in love of one another.
We often face change at the Passover also. This sequence of activity is well established among the people of God and it is recognisable. Sometimes our health is brought to a completion also. Sometimes we are healed of a problem and sometimes we simply die. Often, when God allows us to die, it is because He wants to place no other burden on us. The righteous fall asleep waiting for the resurrection of the saints (Isa. 57:1-2).
Remember this fact. Every single one of us will see every single one of our families and friends in the resurrections no matter who they were and no matter what they did and believed. They will all stand, with and before us, in a sound mind and ready to receive the instruction of God, by and through the members of the faith resurrected in obedience to the Laws of the Living God. No one on earth will come to salvation except through the body and blood of Christ.
Love one another and work for the salvation of the world in love and concern.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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