About Us And Our Journey
By: Rick Gedeon
Hello, my name is Rick Gedeon, and I am currently married to my lovely wife Debbie, and have two children who live in Columbiana Ohio. We are a small family house church who are striving with difficulty to come out of this world of religious and political confusion symbolized in the bible as the term Babylon or confusion identified in Rev. chapters 17 and 18. My wife was baptized in 1980, and I was baptized in 1987 into the Worldwide Church of God, a physical Sabbath keeping Christian church raised up by Herbert W. Armstrong in the late 1920's out of small Sabbath keeping churches he came upon through his wife in Oregon. He came to believe that he was the head of the Philadelphia era of God’s church in Rev. 3:7-13 that would proclaim "the true gospel" of the kingdom of God just before Christ’s second coming. Many of his doctrines were unique from traditional Christianity. He taught that the Trinity, immortality of the soul, heaven as the reward of the saved, eternal torture in hellfire, and the keeping of such holidays as Christmas and Easter were of false pagan origins dating back to the ancient Babylonian Mystery Religion over 4,000 years ago begun by a woman called Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod, who founded the city of Babel. Mr. Armstrong believed that God was an expanding family beginning with Jesus, the firstborn Son of God from the dead, and would soon include the billions of men and woman who have ever lived and died on the earth since the time of Adam. He taught that the Catholic church was the great harlot of Rev. 17:1-5, and the Protestant churches that came out of her were her harlot children. He proclaimed that the U.S. and Britain were the two sons of Joseph: Manasseh and Ephraim who received the physical birthright blessings promised to Abraham upon his unconditional obedience to God, and that they would ascend to world greatness; withheld until this day and age. He believed that the 3 tithes of the Old Testament were still in force as well as the law of clean and unclean meats. He above all taught that the 10 Commandments, including the keeping of the seventh day physical Sabbath, and the yearly seven annual Old Testament Sabbaths that he proclaimed were the seven step plan of the salvation of all mankind were binding on Christians for salvation, as well as the belief in Christ as one's Lord and Savior.
After Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, the new Pastor General of the WWCOG, Joseph W. Tkach, and many of the church leadership along with him began to slowly change the doctrines of Mr. Armstrong, beginning with his doctrine of healing around 1988. Then came the withdrawal and renouncing of the booklet, The United States and Britain in Prophecy around 1991 (which I still believed in), and culminated in the proclaiming around 1995 that the Ten Commandments were the core of the Old Covenant noted in Ex. 34:27-28 and Deut. 9:9; including the Sabbath, the annual seven holy day Sabbaths, doctrine of clean and unclean meats, and tithes, were done away after the death of Christ. They presented their argument in Acts 15:1-31, Gal. 4:21-31 and Ex. 34:27-28. I examined the new evidence the church presented and within a few days I could see they were right! The scripture that was the killer for their argument for me was Ex. 34:27-28:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets of the words of the covenant the Ten Commandments.
To me there was no disputing this. The Old Covenant at it’s core was the Ten Commandments with the Sabbath included! To me this was the “plain truth.” The apostle Paul put the nail in the coffin in Gal. 4:24-25:
"For these are the two covenants: the one from Mt. Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar (the Ten Commandments: Ex. 34:28)- for this Hagar is Mt. Sinai,..."
And in Gal. 4:30 he says:
Nevertheless what does the scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son (Ten Commandments or the Old Covenant), for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.”
The church claimed these changes as the “new truths” or the “new changes.” The church now claimed we, as New Testament Christians were now completely under grace; the law of Christ (Gal 6:2), and that we were now a “Christ centered” church, fulfilling the law by loving one another (Gal 5:14). The sign of a true Christian, the church now stressed was John 13:34-35:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you love another. “By this all will know you are My disciples if you have love for one another.”
This new direction had such a deep impact on me that I began to study and meditate on love and law and realized that if one walked in pure love there is no need for law. This will be laid out in the coming article: Love verses law. I went over and over 1Cor. 13:1-3 and how it stressed that even though you could possess all the gifts of God and not abide in love all is worthless. I remember treating a Christian missionary woman in physical therapy for an injured back in the days of these changes. She told me she had been running an orphanage in Canada for unwanted Indian children, and after her back was healed she was going down to South America to start an Indian orphanage there. I remember being so moved by this. Surely I thought this woman was a true Christian for she believed in Christ and was laying down her life for others as the Lord commanded. I reflected on Mother Theresa and how she gave her entire life to the poorest in India. Surely she must be a Christian even though she prayed to a dead woman (Mary); for I still believed in the mortality of the soul. Truly there were true Christians in traditional Christianity as the WWCOG proclaimed! The church began to embrace Sunday as the weekly day of worship and Christmas and Easter as acceptable holidays of worship; for we were now “free" to worship Christ apart from the works of the law. The church that once accused mainstream Christianity as being the harlots of Rev. chapter 17 was now reaching out and embracing mainstream Christianity, and mainstream Christianity was, for the most part welcoming the Worldwide Church of God into "the body of Christ." At this time I accepted the changes of Sunday as the weekly N.T. day of church worship and the mainstream Christian holidays as acceptable days to worship Christ, believing if God could cleanse sinful man, then He could cleanse a sinful pagan holiday by them being “Christ centered,” but my wife had reservations about worshipping Christ on these holidays, instead at the most wanting to celebrate them as secular days. This belief of hers would later have a tremendous impact on me when I finally did an in depth study into what the bible and Christ revealed about these holidays. The church also now believed as many other mainstream Christian organizations that the weekly physical seventh day Sabbath we used to keep was the Old Testament shadow of the future eternal spiritual rest in Christ upon belief in Him noting Col. 2:16-17 and Hebrews chapters 3 and 4. Although differing in many doctrines, the church emphasized the core doctrine of Christianity: that Jesus was the Son of God and that we were to love one another, and that Jesus would clarify these lesser doctrines at His second coming. The church also took up the mainstream doctrine of the Trinity. Although we were wrong on some of our old doctrines; keeping many of them in the letter of the law, I still felt there were doctrines that we had that were right and true; such as the mortality of the soul in Ezek. chapter 18, the resurrection of the dead in ICor. 15:12-28, the inheritance and reward of the saints being kings and priests on the earth and not in heaven in Rev. 6:9-10, and the eventual salvation of most, if not all of mankind through the shadow of the seven annual yearly Sabbaths manifested through the saving acts of Jesus Christ in Lev. chapter 23. I absolutely did not believe the doctrines of the immortal soul, the reward of heaven for the righteous, and of eternal torture in hellfire for the unsaved. Again, at this time in the mid-1990’s and into 2001, I still believed that the main sign of a Christian was belief in Christ and loving others with the love of Christ. It appeared to me at the time that all Christianity had truth mixed with errors, but held the main truth that Jesus was the Christ and that we were to demonstrate that belief through the love of the brethren noted in 1John 3:23.
I did an in depth study of Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 and in deed as the church proclaimed, I saw the weekly physical Sabbath was the shadow of the future eternal spiritual Sabbath rest in Christ upon belief in Him. Now if the weekly Sabbath was the shadow of the future eternal Sabbath rest in Christ in the O.T., so I thought must be the seven annual yearly Sabbaths that were fulfilled in the past and were yet going to be fulfilled in the future in 2Col. 2:16-17. I re-examined Lev. 23:1-44 and was astonished to realize that the seven annual festivals were actually seven stages that composed the weekly Sabbath. In other words the weekly Sabbath was actually composed of seven parts and those parts made up the whole of this future spiritual Sabbath, and God was at one step at a time through the seven annual Sabbaths going to bring all of mankind into this seventh day eternal spiritual Sabbath rest in Christ. This will also be explained in the article: The eternal Sabbath rest for all of mankind in seven stages. Now as accepted more by traditional Christianity through the renunciation of our errors, I thought we in turn would be able to share some of our doctrines of truth to them. This I soon found out that this was not to be! What was I thinking? What was I drinking?
Some time in the late 1990’s at the beginning of one of our Sunday church services it was announced that the church was withdrawing it’s belief in the annual yearly seven Sabbaths as the days that pointed to God’s saving work for all mankind through Christ. Oh no, I thought, here we go! The church announced that these days represented saving acts by God to ancient Israel from Egypt and did not pertain to us. After all we were now a “New Testament church” and these Old Testament festivals did not pertain to us; plus it was told to us the meaning of them were to vague for us to really know what they foreshadowed. WHAT? The Passover wasn’t vague to me. Did not Christ die on that very day some 1,500 years after it was instituted in Egypt? What about the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Did not Jesus say He was the bread that came down from heaven to give life to the world and that if anyone would eat this bread they would never die, or more properly rendered would not be dead forever as noted in John 6:32-33, 48-51? Then there was the Feast of Pentecost, Feast of Weeks, or Feast of First Fruits. Was the shadow of this festival vague? Was it not fulfilled on that very day by the apostles and the few of Jesus' followers at that time 1,500 years after God commanded the Israelites to keep it in Lev. 23:9-21? How about the Feast of Trumpets? Was this just a vague O.T. festival celebrating the deliverance of ancient Israel? What about Matt. 24:31 describing the return of Christ to the Earth?:
“And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."
Then there is 1Cor. 15:51-52:
"Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed-in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed."
Sounds like this feast was indeed a foreshadowing of the second coming of Christ and the first resurrection of the saints to me! Other scriptures that describe this event are in 1Thes. 2:16 and Rev. 11:15. I didn’t realize how important these doctrines were to me until they were being removed by the church. In the back of my mind I was wondering if being a Christian was truly just belief and love. It seemed to me that the WWCOG was moving all their doctrines toward mainstream Christianity. I never realized how important these doctrines were to me besides belief in Christ and loving one another until they were being changed! Now this I also realized and conveyed to others in the church that when a major doctrine was removed it would lead to a doctrinal vacuum and allow another doctrine dealing with the same subject to replace it. Now that the doctrine of the salvation of all mankind through Christ foreshadowed by the seven annual O.T. Sabbaths was cast into the spiritual trash can, there was basically only one doctrine to replace it: the mainstream doctrine of eternal gruesome torture in hellfire. Soon after this; again in the late 1990’s, it was announced at church that heaven was a state of being, and that even though the believer inherited the earth, it was really heaven he was inheriting. One by one the doctrines that I thought could be shared in the spirit or reality of Christ with other denominations (I must have been nuts to believe this to begin with) were being abandoned completely for mainstream Christian doctrines. In the back of my mind I had drawn a line in the sand that if the church took up the doctrine of eternal hellfire for the unsaved and those who never heard the gospel, it would probably be the end for me and my family as members in the Worldwide Church of God.
In the spring of 2000 I gave my first, and in the end my only sermon (I was chosen to train for lay ministry) in the church on the five components of God’s love, the shadow or outline form of God’s love identified in Ex. 34:6 that was fulfilled later by the reality: Jesus at his first coming. The fifth and last component of His love, truth, went way over my head in it’s true meaning of the identity of the pure worshipers of Christ; that if realized at that time may have saved my wife and I years of drifting in spiritual limbo.
Some time shortly after the sermon I gave, the pastor of our church gave a sermon on the resurrection of the dead and how it didn’t really mean being raised from an unconscious state, but at death the saints were received into heaven. Wow, here came the doctrine of the immortality of the soul! I thought the scriptures he used and the arguments he gave for it were so bad in explaining this pagan doctrine. I and my wife were sitting in our seats astonished at what we were hearing! We were being eased into the doctrine of the immortality of the soul from the past announcement in church of the definition of our future state of being in heaven once risen from the dead, or being alive in the kingdom of God on the earth (Rev. 5:10). I don’t remember all the scriptures he used that day for his argument, but I do remember near the end of the sermon these scriptures to describe what he, and the headquarter church I guess, explained what the resurrection of the dead meant:
"But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years (Rev. 20:5-6)."
Now after our pastor read these scriptures, he asked the congregation what these scriptures meant about the resurrection, and several people in the congregation yelled out that these scriptures meant to be "raised with Christ in baptism." I’m almost 100% sure that these church members were approached sometime before the sermon and asked to shout out this response to help convince the congregation that this was what these scriptures implied, therefore helping to convince the congregation of the immortality of the soul. I say right here and now it was one of the worst sermons I ever heard in trying to connect the dots to make a point clear. Now it was only a question of when, and not if we were given the sermon on the “truth” of the eternal torment of the wicked and unbeliever in hellfire; because now that the immortality of the soul was our doctrine, there had to be a place where the immortal soul went immediately upon death; to eternal reward in heaven, or eternal punishment in hellfire!
In the spring of 2001 sometime around May, our pastor began a sermon telling the congregation that the doctrine of universalism, the doctrine the church had professed that most, if not all mankind would eventually be saved was false! He went on to explain that the true destination of the wicked; those who had never been called, or never heard of the name who could save them were condemned to eternal torture in hellfire! Just as I thought, get rid of one doctrine and it creates a doctrinal vacuum that will soon be replaced by another, AND HERE IT FINALLY WAS! It had to come since we now were instructed in the immortality of the soul; where upon death you were sent to heaven or hell. The doctrine of eternal torment in hell; if you think about it,probably means 99% of all humanity who ever lived have and will end up there, for in truth most traditional Christians are nominal at best, let alone the billions of people who have practiced idolatry in the past as other non-Christian religions do to this day. What a great work of salvation God has been and is now doing according to traditional Christianity!!! I recently asked one co-worker at work who was Catholic if she ever read the bible and she replied: Rick, I’m a Catholic for $#@ sake, I go to Church two times a year! The conversation by the way was about the paganism of Christmas in 2007 at the time of that holiday season. Again, I do not remember all the scriptures our pastor used, but again, at least to me it was simply an awful sermon on proving the doctrine of eternal punishment in hellfire. The scriptures I do remember our pastor using to prove his argument near the end was in Rom. 9:15-18:
For He says to Moses “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name may be declared throughout all the earth." Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
In other words those who do not believe or did not have that opportunity to be saved would be condemned to eternal torture in hell. Our pastor went on to say that it was his responsibility to his congregation to “preach the truth” and eternal punishment in hell was the truth, and exhorted the congregation to refute any arguments a universalist might have against the doctrine of eternal punishment in hellfire. Apparently he had forgotten the key to understanding how to piece together the doctrines of the bible as testified by God in Isa. 8:9-10:
“Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, Here a little and there a little.”
And again in Isa. 28:13:
"But the word of the Lord was to them, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a little,…"
To fully understand a doctrine you cannot stand on one scripture. An example of this can be found in Joel 2:32:
"And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
So does this scripture mean that all people have to do is confess Jesus and be saved? Of course not! There is confession of Jesus as your Savior along with repentance from your evil sinful nature, and from then on to walk in spirit and truth with the power of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ (Gal. 2:20) among other things written in other parts of the Bible. Again, back to the sermon; my wife and I were again astonished at what we heard and after the sermon we approached our pastor who sat in front of us and asked why he did not finish the theme of Romans chapter 9 which culminated in Rom. 11:29-33, where God would have mercy to salvation upon all; both to Israel and the Gentiles:
"For the gifts of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God (Gentiles), yet now have obtained mercy through their disobedience (Israel), even so these also have now have been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all (the whole world) to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all (eventual salvation for all mankind). Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!"
We were basically brushed off, and that basically was the beginning of the end of my membership and fellowship in the Worldwide Church of God. I attended sporadically for the next few months then completely dropped out. My wife attended a little longer on and off then she to dropped out. One year later my pastor came to visit me to encourage me to return to church, and while there denied that he ever gave a sermon on eternal punishment in hellfire. He may have said this because at the time the church published a booklet that I was sent that stated that God probably would provide some sort of salvation for the lost and uncalled. This in reality to me makes me think they (WCOG) still know the truth of the plan of salvation of Christ through the shadow of the seven annual Old Testament Sabbaths, but for the sake of risking not blending in with traditional Christianity they, I believe, had stated the doctrine in a subtle way without trying to ruffle traditional Christianity’s feathers. Once he said this about his sermon at my house the conversation was basically over.
The year was basically early 2002 and my wife and I found ourselves spiritually adrift and alone. Younger church members and friends around our age we used to fellowship with had earlier left the church for more “spiritual” congregations or to experience more “spiritual experiences” such as being “baptized in the Spirit” or to find congregations that better fit their and their families needs. Here was my dilemma; I felt I had two choices at the time; traditional Christianity which taught salvation in Christ through grace but in which taught many doctrines I didn’t believe or see in the Bible, or the splintered Sabbath keeping churches that came out of the WCOG that continued to hold many of the doctrines I believed in, but attached many of the Old Testament doctrines (letters of the spirit of law) to salvation along with the belief in Christ which the apostle Paul clearly condemned the Galatians for doing. I absolutely saw that such religious organizations as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormon Church were absolutely apostate! For years I would go back and forth in studies thinking that the Sabbath 10 Commandment keeping churches were correct, then I would study more and change my mind, thinking that traditional Christian churches were correct, and I and my wife even attended a few of their churches in the Youngstown, Ohio area but never felt like we fit in, plus I just couldn’t attend a church that taught such doctrines as the Trinity, heaven or eternal hellfire, and if my wife and I tried to share any of our beliefs with the people in those congregations, I am sure we would have been looked upon and cast out as heretics. During the time after 2003, my personal prayer and studies began to become more sporadic, and as this happened some of the sins of my past began to take root in me once again. I began swearing at work, drinking more heavily, especially at social gatherings to the point of drunkenness, but there was one sin from my youth that really began to dominate my life to the point where depression became severe, and down the road toward 2006 the contemplation of suicide became more dominant in my thoughts. I would try to pray but the sin, a stronghold now of Satan would cause me to fall, and I would give up and quit praying or studying for long periods of time.
I remember one night thinking, what a mess Christianity seemed to be in a state of. Where was the church Jesus said he would build, and that the gates of hades(the grave) would never prevail against it? On one hand there were churches that that I saw that had true doctrines but were legalistically binding Old Testament shadow rituals on people no longer required along with the confession of Jesus, and on the other hand there was mainstream Christianity (thousands of denominations) that taught grace through belief in Christ, but were full doctrines I knew were not true. Then there were all those weird ministers on T.V. with bizarre behaviors and creepy rituals like Benny Hinn that I’m sure make Jesus a turn off for many people. There were the religious hucksters such as Joyce Myers who had all the time in the world to write book after book on every aspect of the word of God and how it dealt with different aspects and trials of peoples lives, and through the peddling of these books for profit she had reaped millions and millions of dollars from sincere but gullible people. I looked at a book shelf one day and must have seen at least five of her books with her picture on the covers with clothes on that would make a queen on a throne seethe with jealousy. Then there was her giant mansion, giant swimming pools, water falls and guest houses acquired by her peddling of the Word of God for her own profit which is absolutely condemned in the Bible. I’m sure the apostle Paul would be impressed with how she and others like her preach the word and gospel of our Lord to the masses as he did. Do these above examples sound like Paul in his ministry of the preaching of the gospel in Acts 20:33-34?:
"I have coveted no ones silver or gold or apparel. Yes you yourselves know that these hands (his own) provided for my necessities, and for those who were with me,…"
And in 1Cor. 4:9-13 Paul testified:
"For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong. You are distinguished, but we are dishonored! Even to this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed (wonder if Joyce ever read that one), and beaten, and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands(earning their living apart from the preaching of the word). Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure it; being defamed, we entreat. We have been made the filth of the world, the off scouring of all things until now."
Sounds like the modern day prominent minister of today; doesn’t it? How about Jesus who made all things through God? Did He live like a fat cat through His ministry like many of the prominent ministers of this day and age? One man, a scribe came to Him and said in Matt. 8:19-21:
“Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay His head.”
And in 2Cor. 8:9, Paul made this statement about Christ:
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty you might become rich."
I wonder if Paul ever said to the Galatians: "For ten dollars a piece you may have my exciting eye opening epistle that will instruct you in how you are not justified by the works of the Law, but by faith in Christ, and with a five dollar bonus I will reveal the nine fruits of God’s Spirit in this knowledge packed epistle that if walked in will lead you to a spiritually joyous prosperous life! The word of God has become big, big business for monetary gain. I’m on a big rant, but this was how I felt at the time; thousands of denominations with different doctrines, ministers living millionaire lives off the word of God, enough to make you want to throw up; my wife and I would often say!
It was in the fall of 2007 when I decided to begin to deal with these sins that I had fallen back into. I made up my mind that no matter how bad I screwed up or sinned, I was not going to cease from prayer or studying God's word. I would get down on my knees with the bible in front of me and pray and read. When I was out in the yard working, I would put a set of headphones on and play nothing but Christian music on CD's just to keep God and Christ on my mind (my mind continually races and the result has been severe insomnia for years), then later I bought the whole NKJV of the Bible on CD, and if I was in the car, working in the yard, or the house, I would listen to it. You see, I had heard a sermon tape years ago from a Promise Keepers convention that the only way an obsessive person weighed down in sin could overcome was to become absolutely obsessed with God and Christ, and this is what I did, and slowly I felt that as I was drawing near to God, He was drawing near to me (Jas. 4:8), and the bondage of sin I could feel was slowly being lifted from me. Not only was this happening, but God was beginning to open my mind to the state of the whole mess of so called Christianity, and who the true few elect of God were AT THIS TIME. I know, I'm another one of the thousands of nuts on the internet along with the thousands of Christian denominations claiming to know and have the truth of God and the bible. BUT BE INFORMED AND WITNESSED HERE, and if you read the article: The Great Falling Away, these thousands of denominations and Christian Internet sites are going to over time, possibly many years, as the Lord delays His second coming, fall away from belief in the true Creator God and the Lord Jesus as Savior, culminating in the annihilation of what is left of their mother, the Catholic Church (Rev. 17:15-17) by a man who will not tolerate any religious organizations (women, Dan. 11:37). So as all these thousands of denominations that have cropped up over time, will over time die out! In the end, at Christ’s return it will come down to two small groups of believers and those who hear and believe the gospel they continue to hold fast to and re-proclaim the second coming of Christ and His second coming.
God began, in late 2007 to reveal to me that the pure and undefiled believers are the ones who walk in the spirit of the Old Testament law which is none other than the revelation of Jesus Christ, the shadow or the outline of the Old Testament and law that He would fulfill when He came the first time and what He would yet do in the future for all of mankind. In the law of Moses, Psalms, and prophets, they reveal the hidden truth and knowledge of Christ. Just about all the physical acts and many of the events in the Old Testament God had the Israelites perform were non other than events that shadowed what Christ would do when He would come to the earth both times. I now fully understood what Jesus meant in Mat. 5:17-20:
"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy, BUT TO FULFILL (I came to do it all for you and through you). “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled (till I fulfill all things, not you)."
In other words I will do it all, I will accomplish all things, not you. I will fulfill the righteous requirements of the law in you, and none of it will be done by you and your own effort. I AM THE REALITY OF THE SHADOW OF THE LAW. I am your spiritual Sabbath rest for eternity(ages abiding) and by you keeping the weekly letter of it will not make you righteous. I am the real Passover that cleanses you of your sin, I am the one who will sweep all the leavening (sin) out of your life forever and fulfill the Days Of Unleavened Bread in you, and you keeping the letter of these seven days will not make you righteous. I am the one who will dwell in you fulfilling Pentecost, the Feast of First Fruits or Feast of Weeks. I am the one who will command my angel to blow the trumpet and I will intervene and save the world, and by you keeping that day as a shadow of My mighty work on that very day will not make you righteous. I will fulfill the Royal Law in you by My and My Father’s Spirit dwelling in you. I am the one who fulfills the law of clean and unclean meats by giving you the power by My Spirit to discern between clean and unclean doctrine. I am the one who circumcises your heart spiritually. God made me realize that we were in the spirit or true intention (Jesus Christ) of the shadow of Him, the Old Covenant and law. I realized that the letter or written code of the law was done away, but the hidden knowledge of Christ in that letter or code; again what He had done and was yet going to do in the future was still true and going to come to pass! Even though I no longer was required to keep the Day of Atonement, this event was still going to take place through Christ, was going to be fulfilled by Christ, and was an event that would be for the world at that time in the future who would come under the complete rule of Christ and accept Him as His Lord and Savoir. I already have accepted Christ; that day and event of salvation would be for another group of people at another time in the future after the return of Christ.
I now fully realized what the Worldwide Church of God had done. They threw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater! They rightly threw or cast out the letters of the O.T. laws they were keeping that were abolished at the manifestation of the reality: Jesus Christ, but they also wrongly cast out the knowledge of what these Old Testament letter events foreshadowed, what Jesus accomplished and would accomplish in the future, and therefore caused them to drift into the great heresies of the Babylonian Mystery Religion of Rev. chapter 17. What a great collapse of the work and church that Herbert W. Armstrong built, but believe it or not because of his moral flaws and the preaching of a false gospel this was prophesied by God in the bible which will be discussed in a future article.
Now what about the many splinter groups of The Worldwide Church of God, such as the United Church Of God, International Church of God or the Restored Church of God, among the many other splintered groups who still hold to the Ten Commandments as the core of the teachings of Christ, especially the physical seventh day Sabbath, and continue to keep certain other requirements of the Old Covenant for salvation along with the belief in the reality; Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? They always point to this scripture as proof that the Ten Commandments, and certain aspects of the law are still in effect:
"The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness’ sake; He will magnify the law and make it honorable (Isa. 52:21)."
They always say that Jesus came and made the law, the Ten Commandments in it’s Old Covenant form and certain other aspects of the Old Covenant (Ex. 34:28) larger in importance and more weightier. Their example would be something like this. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy (Old Testament). Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy (New Testament magnified). Now think about this. Why do we usually have to magnify something? We magnify things to see them for what they truly are or truly look like. What you think you may be seeing with the naked eye may not truly be what it is the object you are observing. We magnify things larger that we can see what they really are so as to identify or clarify what they truly are. So it is true with the Spirit of the law: Jesus Christ. Take again the example of the physical seventh day Sabbath. The splintered churches of the WWCOG believe Jesus came and made the letter of this law more binding, but Jesus said I came to fulfill the law, and so clarified or magnified what the true meaning of the Old Testament Sabbath meant (Math. 12:28-29 and Hebrews chapters 3 and 4), the spiritual rest in Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul even testified of being in the Spirit of the law:
“And we have such trust through Christ of God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter (shadow of Christ) but of the Spirit (reality, Jesus Christ); for the letter kills (attempted works of righteousness by the works of the shadow, the Old Testament law); but the Spirit (Jesus the reality of the letter of that law) gives life (2Cor. 3:5-6)."
Now read further in 2Cor. 3:15-17:
"But even to this day, when Moses (shadow of Christ) is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord (reality of the Old Testament shadow) the veil is taken away."
Now notice what Paul says in verse six:
"Now the Lord is the Spirit; (reality of what the Old Testament Covenant and law foreshadowed)."
Now I was beginning to understand what Paul meant by walking in the Spirit(Jesus Christ).
In Rom 2:29 Paul also said:
"...but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit and not in the letter."
And one of the strongest scriptures of all that points to Jesus as the shadow or fulfillment of the law is in the gospel of John chapter 5:45-47:
"Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you-Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
Now did Moses write about Jesus directly? Of course not! But he wrote about Jesus in outline form, in the written code, in the letter that the leaders of his day could not figure out because they did not have the Spirit to open their minds and were purposely blinded by God.
Now again, what of the WWCOG under Mr. Armstrong, and the splinter groups that continued to follow his doctrines after the leadership that took over after his death and did away with them? My wife would tell me often about her Aunt who was a member of the WWCOG for years before the changes and what a godly woman she was, and believe me their are many godly members that I knew and know that are very godly that attend these splinter churches to this day. She felt she was a true Christian even though much of her beliefs and acts of worship were based in the Old Testament letter of the law, again the shadow of the reality of Jesus Christ, along with the belief in Him as the reality of the shadow. I pondered their beliefs and doctrines. This fact was plain, they were, and are completely out of, and have nothing to do with traditional Christianity, which a little later through study of the third and forth churches (ecclesias) of the second chapter of Revelation, I truly and frightenedly realized the Babylon harlot of Rev. chapter 17 were polluting the true believers of Christ with pagan doctrines. These splinters also do not involve themselves and mix their faith with the corrupt politics of this world. These many splintered Sabbath keeping churches of God seemed to have half their faith in the Old Covenant (again the shadow of the future: Jesus) and half their faith in the reality; belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior for salvation, and one thing I know being a former member of the WWCOG before the changes, many greatly boasted and rested on the fact that they had the knowledge of the Old Testament shadow of Jesus Christ and the certain parts of the the letter of these laws they kept physically, such as the weekly Sabbath and the annual Holy Day Sabbaths and what they foreshadowed. They felt they were rich in knowledge. Remember Herbert Armstrong taught the keeping of the Ten Commandments (Old Covenant: Ex. 34:28), annual yearly Sabbaths along with belief in Jesus as Savior was binding for salvation on Christians with the weekly Sabbath being the identifying sign of the true Christian. I pondered and pondered over this because of what my wife said about her Aunt and then one day it hit me! OH MY!! The WWCOG under Mr. Armstrong and all these splinter groups were, and are truly part of the Church of God! They are the church identified by Jesus as the church of Laodicea. Think about it if you can! They have half their faith in the Old Covenant, the shadow of Jesus Christ, and half their faith in the New Covenant; the reality; Jesus Christ. They are neither cold by having part of their faith in Christ, the reality who fulfilled and will yet fulfill the Spirit or reality of the Old Covenant law, nor are they hot because of having part of their faith in the shadow of the Old Covenant law; Jesus Christ. They are between the shadow and the reality. THEY ARE LUKEWARM! This has to be one of the most astounding hidden truths of the bible. The table of end time Biblical events are beginning to be set! The man Herbert W. Armstrong, who thought raised up the church of Philadelphia, proclaiming the “true” gospel of the kingdom of God that would culminate with the return of Christ in his lifetime (he died 25 years ago) is actually the father of the modern Laodicean churches of God! This church actually has its roots in the oldest church of all, beginning at Jerusalem! This truth will absolutely be laid out in the coming articles: The Church Of Laodicea: They Exist Today.
What about the status of mainstream Christianity and the claim by the WWCOG that they were true Christians that followed Christ after they dismantled the doctrines of Herbert Armstrong. The time was about Nov. 2006, and at that time my wife and I were still celebrating Christmas, but not as a religious holiday. Something drove me to start studying the heresies that Christ pointed out in the third and forth church eras of Rev. chapter 2. I studied the meaning of what the doctrine of the Nicolaitans was and discovered they were people who separated themselves and rose above the common lay church members, claiming to be holier, even dressing differently, and exercised dominion and authority over them as the Gentile leaders that Jesus warned his disciples not to do in Luke 22:24-26:
But there was also rivalry among them, as to which of them should be considered the greatest. And He said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority are called benefactors. But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you; let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves."
As the Roman Catholic Church developed, they developed a hierarchy of clergy that separated themselves from the common lay members culminating in the Pope, proclaimed as the one who sits in the seat of Christ on Earth, and he and the clergy, instead of acting as shepherds over their flocks and dwelling among them (1Pet 5:1), separated themselves and became their benefactors and lorded over their flocks, a practice Jesus said he hates (Rev. 2:6). You can see this same doctrine today, not only with the Catholic Church but with traditional Christianity in general. Many of these ministers go by the title of Reverend or Father, where as the apostle Paul simply went by the name of Paul. Many of these churches clergies are still set up as separate from the common lay members. And again, many ministers in this modern age have reaped millions of dollars from peddling the Word of God; a practice condemned by Peter and Paul, and have also become the benefactors over the common lay members.
Now the clincher study I then did that opened my eyes to traditional Christianity as false, and was the Babylonian Mystery Religion was the study of the church of Thyatira. These Christians were allowing heresies to creep in among them and allowed themselves to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols at the hands of a prophetess called Jezebel. Now the book of Revelation was written in symbols and a woman in the Bible and Revelation is identified as a church as in Rev. chapter 12 and the fallen woman in Rev. chapter 17, and this committing of sexual immorality and eating (spiritually) things sacrificed to idols was symbolic of some kind of spiritual idolatry this woman was causing the followers of Christ to commit, and therefore pollute their walk with Him. I took the advice of Herbert Armstrong I learned years ago in the WWCOG and would study this allowing the bible to interpret itself.
Now who was this woman Jezebel? She is known and recognized as the most notoriously wicked woman in the Old Testament who married the wicked king Ahab of the kingdom of Israel; the daughter of king Ethbaal of Sidonia, and high priest of Baal, and by studying her in 2Kings chapter 16, I realized she brought the most abominable, and detestable forms of idol worship into Israel; Baal or sun worship and Asherah, worship of the queen of heaven: Semiramis of ancient Babylon (1Kings 16:29-33 and 1Kings 18: 19). Some of the different translations for Asharah according to the nations she was worshipped in are Ishtar, Isis, Ashtoreth, Astarte, and the English translation of this word? None other than the word Easter! And Baal the sun God who required the sacrifice of children by burning them in fire had many names in the Old Testament one called Baal-Bereth or lord of the fir tree (evergreen or modern day Christmas tree). This sun worship and Asherah idol worship that Jesus was condemning that the church of Thyatira was allowing to creep in among them had to be none other than the Catholic Church (Jezebel) snaring the undefiled believers of God into keeping the idolatry of the birth of the son god Baal known today as Christmas, the counterfeit watered down so called spiritual celebration of the birth of the Son of God, Jesus Christ at the time of the winter solstice, and also the worship of Semiramis (changed by the Catholics to Mary the mother of Jesus). I realized again that the Old Testament also in this manner appeared to be a shadow of the N.T. As it went with the church in the wilderness, Old Testament Israel, so it went with the N.T. church with both quickly corrupting themselves soon after their instructions in righteousness were given them with the Old Covenant by God in the Old Testament and the New Covenant by Jesus in the New Testament. As just about most of Old Testament Israel quickly corrupted themselves with the idols of the heathen people around them in the promised land that God commanded to keep separate from when they entered it; so it was with New Testament Christianity as it spread out from Israel where almost all incorporated the pagan idolatrous customs (cloaking them in the name of Christ and God) around them from the heathens God commanded them to be separate from. Notice what Paul said in 2Cor. 6:14-18:
"Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness. And what accord does Christ have with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with Idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said. “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore “come out from among them and be ye separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.” I will be a Father to you and you shall be my sons and daughters, say’s the Lord Almighty.”
Now read 1Cor. 10:19-21:
"What am I (Paul) saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? But I say that the things that the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of demons."
By reading these heresies that took place in the third and forth church groups it appeared that most who confessed Christ as Savior did not take heed to the admonishment of the scriptures above commanded by God and the Babylonian Mystery Religion from that time on overran just about all of what is called Christianity. This study of the Old Testament and New Testament Jezebels and what they brought into the Old Testament church of Israel and the New Testament spiritual Israel almost made the flesh peel off my bones. This was the nail in the coffin for me that traditional Christianity, although confessing Christ was according to the word of God, full of pagan practices and lies cloaked in the name of Christ and God. They had, and are fulfilling the words of our Lord in Luke 13:23-24.
Then one said to Him (one of his disciples), Lord are their few who are saved (in this present age). And He (Jesus) said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gait, for many, I say to you will seek to enter and will not be able."
There are today just over two billion people who profess to be Christians, many sincere, but most appear nominal, and Jesus said that many would seek to enter life but would not be able to. Satan has so polluted traditional Christianity with pagan lies that it has caused them to stumble and enter the broad gait. Although they believe in an Almighty Creator and Jesus as Savior, what doctrines they teach about them are false from the doctrine of the Trinity to the sick minded pagan doctrine of eternal gruesome torture in hellfire. It is God and Christ who create and proclaim what is truth, not man. It is God who dictates what pure and clean worship of Him involves, not man. 1John 2:21 says:
"I have written you because you know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth."
The words of Duet. 12:29-32 still ring true today in the New Testament church of Israel:
“When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to disposes, and you displace them and dwell in their land. Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and you do not enquire after their God’s, saying, ‘how did these nations serve their God’s? I also will do likewise’ (religion of ancient Babylon). You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord which He hates they have done to their God’s for they burn even their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods."
Now Jesus himself proclaimed in John 4:23-24:
"But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him."
I was completely fooled when the WWCOG began their slide into the Babylonian Mystery Religion thinking along with them that we had “freedom” to worship Christ the way we wanted as long as it was “Christ centered.” I’d like to ask the leadership of the WWCOG or any head of any mainstream Christian denomination if it would be O.K. to worship Christ with the customs of, and the keeping of the Muslim month of Ramadan as long as if we made it “Christ centered.” I don’t have to answer what they would say to that. You know what they would say,
but yet they keep these pagan holidays for Christ that have much more sinister origins and rituals than those of the Muslim faith; although keeping these pagan festivals now for nearly sixteen or seventeen hundred years has caused them to do it in complete ignorance and basically is still kept by most as the time of the riotous drunken festival the Romans kept 2,000 years ago; or if they do know there origin, keep them because their relatives, friends, and because the rest of the traditional Christian world does. They are afraid to go against the majority and be looked on as outcasts to those around them. They desire "the praise of men more than the praise of God."
After I, through the Spirit I hope, realized that the true and undefiled believers were those who confessed Christ, walked in the spirit or intention of the law which again is the revelation of Jesus Christ, I tried to convey these things to my wife, and said that there were others out there who proclaimed the same faith, although few, but she had a hard time with this; thinking there were no people out there that appeared to believe the same way, who were out of Babylon (this world), did not keep some aspects of the letter of the law or who were not riddled with paganism until about a week later when she came upon a website called L. Ray Smith: Those Who Contradict where the website taught the true walk of Christ was by the spirit of the law; (and have a small fellowship of believers) which again for the hundredth time is the revelation of Jesus Himself fulfilling all things; what He did and what He will yet do in the future of mankind. After several months we found a few other websites where the same truth was taught and this seemed to be their pattern. Most had appeared to come out of the Worldwide Church of God, probably after they made the changes to mainstream Christianity. They probably saw that the letter of the law such as the seventh day physical Sabbath was indeed transformed or magnified to it’s true meaning of the spiritual eternal rest in Christ, and God also opened their eyes to the truth that Jesus is the spirit or reality of the entire Old Covenant law; where as many thousands of other members quit out of confusion and disillusionment, and the rest were blinded by Satan into mainstream Christianity, to join the great harlot and her offspring (Rev. 17:1-5). This was actually prophesied by God to happen to the work of Herbert Armstrong; again because of his moral corruption, a topic to be discussed in the third article on this site called The Church Of The Laodiceans: They Exist Today.
What sealed my faith in the few who walk in the spirit of the law today was studying the message of Jesus to the church of Sardis, the era or ecclesia I believe the scattered few unorganized true believers belong to at this very time as we near the end of the age, and that will soon give birth to the church of Philadelphia that will become a small organized, but very zealous group for Christ; probably mostly through intense persecution near, and at the very end of the age. I won’t go into to much detail here about the church of Sardis, but it is in the midst at this time where the Christian world has been almost completely overrun by the Babylonian Mystery Religion to the point where there are just a few pure and undefiled worshipers of Christ in the spirit of the law, the knowledge of Christ hidden in a mystery, and who have kept themselves spotless from these polluted great false Christian religions; nor do they entangle themselves and their faith with the corrupt politics of this world (Rev. 17:1-2). Let’s read what Christ says about this very, very tiny group of people in Rev. 3:1-5. I will write it from the Concordant Literal New Testament:
“And to the messenger of the ecclesia in Sardis write: Now this He is saying Who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: “I am aware of your acts, that you have a name that you are living but you are dead.”
This could mean He was saying that you are so small in number amongst two billion false Christians that it is as if you don’t exist. Jesus goes on in verse 2:
“Become watchful, and establish the rest (remnant believers) who were about to be dying; for I have not found your acts completed in the sight of my God."
This group has now been put on a watch, to hold the battle line in a time of moral decline and turning away from the truth of the existence of God and Jesus. Now this scripture of Jesus condemning the church for not completing it’s works or assignment by God disturbs me greatly. I know He is speaking of this very day and age when the world would be in a time of leisure, ease, prosperity and self indulgences without persecution, therefore because of a lack of total zeal for the work of Christ and tempted to be weighed down by the cares of this present life of physical prosperity, this church would almost fall away as the rest of the professing Christian world is currently doing and will continue to do from the belief that God and Jesus are real and exist. But they (Sardis) were given the command to watch and hold fast in a time that the world will be rapidly falling away from the truth. Again read our article The Great Falling Away for this eye opening truth that all of professing Christianity is currently falling away from the truth that Jesus is the Christ and that God exists! But it will not die out as pointed out in the book of Haggai. God’s Church or house will be rebuilt and become re-organized before the return of Christ. Now notice verse 4 of Rev. chapter 3:
"But you have a few (translated in the Greek as puny) names in Sardis who do not pollute their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.”
What does this scripture actually mean. I found the answer in Rev. 14, verses 4 and 5:
"These are the ones who were not defiled with women (traditional Christianity and other Christian cults), for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being first fruits to God and to the Lamb." And in their mouth was found no guile, for they are without fault before the throne of God.''
Now the most common interpretation of these scriptures by traditional Christianity is that these are 144,000 Jewish men who will be unmarried and preach the gospel at the end of the age. This could be no further from the truth! Remember the symbol for a woman in the bible? It is the symbol of a church. These are both men and women who did not corrupt themselves or commit spiritual sexual fornication or immorality with the Babylon harlot churches of this world (Rev. 2:14,20) or commit fornication with the political systems of this world under the sway of Satan (Rev. 17:1-2 and Lk. 4:5-7), and the number 144,000 is also symbolic. They hold to the Lord Jesus as their Savior, Lord, and King, the fulfiller of all things, and are under His authority and government; the kingdom of God.
Now in conclusion, this is what I see through the inspiration of the Spirit of the current situation of the churches of God at this time; for I have prayed many times to God that if these articles and studies are not of the truth that He would not let them prosper and that the desire in me to write them would die; for the last thing I want to be is a deceiver. and above all do not want to peddle the Word of God for money to become physically rich through it as many do in this day and age. God did say in Proverbs 23:23:
"Buy the truth and do not sell it."
In other words buy it by studying it and giving your life to it, then share it freely with others. Jesus also said in Mat. 10:8:
“Freely you have received, freely give.”
In Acts 20:35 Jesus also said:
“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Lastly I do not want this website or the articles to come across with a “Thus sayeth the Lord” attitude. For as Paul said in 1 Cor. 13 we see in a glass darkly. As the time of Christ's return draws nearer the remnant will see things clearer. When and if there are errors discovered in the articles they will be pointed out and corrected.
My wife gave a good analogy of the history of the state of Christianity and what it’s going through right now. Last winter after a very strong wind storm, the cover of our above ground swimming pool blew off and fell into the pool. We were not able to get the cover back on. When it blew off the water was crystal clear but as the weather warmed over time through the spring months the pool became filthy with algae, rotting leaves, dirt and aquatic insects; the same fate of Christianity over the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years with the incorporation of idolatrous pagan lies and by corruption with the carnal governments of this world. Then when the time came to get the pool ready all that filth was slowly filtered out by the pool filter and getting into it and cleaning it manually, but over time the pool was restored to it’s crystal clear pure and clean state. So now is this process happening in the church of God. The churches of Laodicea, actually the oldest of all the churches of God in practice of worship; who have half their faith in the letter of the law and half their faith in the reality: Jesus Christ; for they are in between the letter and the reality; neither hot or cold but lukewarm, are now firmly established, originating from the work of Herbert Armstrong and the WWCOG before it became completely apostate. These groups came out of the Sabbath keeping churches, Herbert W. Armstrong; who, when he studied the word of God must have been so shocked at the filthy pagan state of traditional Christianity that he swung the pendulum completely the other way. He must have thought that since traditional Christianity kept such pagan holidays as Christmas and Easter, and worshipped on the day of traditional pagan sun worship; Sunday, that there must be days in the bible that God established to be kept, hence the binding of the letter of the law doctrines of the seven annual festival Sabbaths along with the keeping of the seventh day Old Testament letter Sabbath commands along with belief in Christ, thus the modern day church of Laodicea came into prominence. When Mr. Armstrong died and the church rightly saw the error of the binding of the Old Covenant with the New Covenant, and then sank into the Babylonian Mystery Religion, a few realized although the letter was no longer in force, the truth of what they stood for had come to pass in Christ and were yet going to be fulfilled by Christ in the future, and therefore retained this knowledge and began to walk in the spirit of the law which most importantly is the fulfillment of the royal law by the Holy Spirit, Christ in us (Gal. 2:20), "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" the very gospel and doctrine that the apostle Paul received from the Lord Jesus Himself (Gal.1:11-12) which was apparently overrun by the Catholic Church in the third and forth church eras basically bringing it to a halt , but now as my pool slowly became cleansed, the church is also re-emerging into the process of returning to it’s virgin undefiled state. An interesting aspect of what is going on is that most of this small group was born out of the church and churches that were in the same condition at it's start in Jerusalem (Acts. 15:1-5, and Acts 21:18-22). Again this website and my family are a small part, again a very small part of very small unorganized groups of Christians at this time who walk in the spirit of the law, Jesus Christ and do not entangle themselves in the false religions or politics of this world. This is our contribution to the church at this time to help the brethren not to fall into the fate of the professing Christian world which is in the process at this time of falling away from the belief in the Almighty God and the Savior Jesus. I will leave you with these scriptures in the book of Haggai chapters 1:1-14. This account of the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem after it’s destruction by the Babylonians. It is actually a symbol of the rebuilding of the church of God near the end of the age by a small remnant through the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit. I firmly believe that the material and moral decline of the U.S. and other lost nations of Israel happening at this present time along with coming persecution as the world abandons the belief in God and Christ over time will begin to help focus this scattered group of believers to come together and focus on what really matters; the rebuilding of the church of God, as God struck the Jews that returned to Jerusalem with material and physical plagues in the days of Haggai to motivate them to rebuild His physical temple that was destroyed when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, and took the Jews captives. Here is Haggai chapter 1:1-6:
In the second year of king Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying, “thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying: this people says, the time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house (spiritual house) should be built (or rebuilt).” Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses (look at the beautiful houses Americans live in today), and this (spiritual) temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways! “ You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat but do not have enough; You drink but are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, earns wages to put in a bag with holes.” Thus says the Lord of hosts: consider your ways! Go up to the mountains (a mountain is a symbol for a nation or kingdom in the Bible) and bring wood (converts called by God) and build the temple (church) that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified, says the Lord."
Now in verse 9 this is how my wife and I have been feeling this past year. Although we made more money this past year than ever it has literally slipped through our hands and we can’t even explain how or where it went, and now both our jobs may be in peril. Now notice verse 9:
“You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Says the Lord of hosts." Because of My house (church of God) that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house."
Now what does God really think of the temple of Solomon that was built for Him in Jerusalem? Go to Isa. 66:1:
Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest? For all these things My hand has made…"
He is talking here in Haggai about the restoration of the spiritual church being re-established near the end of the age! You can read the conclusion of this analogy in Hag. 2:15-19, where economic hardship would greatly influence the church to bring forth fruit (converts to God). This spring, after becoming very familiar with verse 9 of Haggai chapter I noticed all the people in my neighborhood landscaping their yards, fertilizing their grass, planting shrubs and flowers and so on; tending to their houses. I myself couldn’t do much because I was broke. But doesn’t that scripture seem to describe this day and age? Now the U.S. economy is now in decline as God in Deut. chapter 28 said it would for it’s growing immoral filth along with the world falling away from the belief in God and Christ. Now notice verse 12:
"Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant (few undefiled believers) of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him; and the people feared the presence of the Lord."
Now notice verse 14:
"So the Lord stirred up Zerbbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozedak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and worked on the house of the Lord (symbolic of the end time restoration of the COG)."
Remember these remnant few came out of the kingdom of Babylon and restored the physical temple of God; so at this present time this remnant has come out of this present day Babylonish world (Rev. 18:4-5), and will assist through Christ in rebuilding the spiritual house or church of God. In ending this article I pray that God would give us His wisdom and understanding in these scriptures to discern between truth and error of His holy Word in the coming years before Christ finally does return.
By: Rick Gedeon
Hello, my name is Rick Gedeon, and I am currently married to my lovely wife Debbie, and have two children who live in Columbiana Ohio. We are a small family house church who are striving with difficulty to come out of this world of religious and political confusion symbolized in the bible as the term Babylon or confusion identified in Rev. chapters 17 and 18. My wife was baptized in 1980, and I was baptized in 1987 into the Worldwide Church of God, a physical Sabbath keeping Christian church raised up by Herbert W. Armstrong in the late 1920's out of small Sabbath keeping churches he came upon through his wife in Oregon. He came to believe that he was the head of the Philadelphia era of God’s church in Rev. 3:7-13 that would proclaim "the true gospel" of the kingdom of God just before Christ’s second coming. Many of his doctrines were unique from traditional Christianity. He taught that the Trinity, immortality of the soul, heaven as the reward of the saved, eternal torture in hellfire, and the keeping of such holidays as Christmas and Easter were of false pagan origins dating back to the ancient Babylonian Mystery Religion over 4,000 years ago begun by a woman called Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod, who founded the city of Babel. Mr. Armstrong believed that God was an expanding family beginning with Jesus, the firstborn Son of God from the dead, and would soon include the billions of men and woman who have ever lived and died on the earth since the time of Adam. He taught that the Catholic church was the great harlot of Rev. 17:1-5, and the Protestant churches that came out of her were her harlot children. He proclaimed that the U.S. and Britain were the two sons of Joseph: Manasseh and Ephraim who received the physical birthright blessings promised to Abraham upon his unconditional obedience to God, and that they would ascend to world greatness; withheld until this day and age. He believed that the 3 tithes of the Old Testament were still in force as well as the law of clean and unclean meats. He above all taught that the 10 Commandments, including the keeping of the seventh day physical Sabbath, and the yearly seven annual Old Testament Sabbaths that he proclaimed were the seven step plan of the salvation of all mankind were binding on Christians for salvation, as well as the belief in Christ as one's Lord and Savior.
After Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, the new Pastor General of the WWCOG, Joseph W. Tkach, and many of the church leadership along with him began to slowly change the doctrines of Mr. Armstrong, beginning with his doctrine of healing around 1988. Then came the withdrawal and renouncing of the booklet, The United States and Britain in Prophecy around 1991 (which I still believed in), and culminated in the proclaiming around 1995 that the Ten Commandments were the core of the Old Covenant noted in Ex. 34:27-28 and Deut. 9:9; including the Sabbath, the annual seven holy day Sabbaths, doctrine of clean and unclean meats, and tithes, were done away after the death of Christ. They presented their argument in Acts 15:1-31, Gal. 4:21-31 and Ex. 34:27-28. I examined the new evidence the church presented and within a few days I could see they were right! The scripture that was the killer for their argument for me was Ex. 34:27-28:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets of the words of the covenant the Ten Commandments.
To me there was no disputing this. The Old Covenant at it’s core was the Ten Commandments with the Sabbath included! To me this was the “plain truth.” The apostle Paul put the nail in the coffin in Gal. 4:24-25:
"For these are the two covenants: the one from Mt. Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar (the Ten Commandments: Ex. 34:28)- for this Hagar is Mt. Sinai,..."
And in Gal. 4:30 he says:
Nevertheless what does the scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son (Ten Commandments or the Old Covenant), for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.”
The church claimed these changes as the “new truths” or the “new changes.” The church now claimed we, as New Testament Christians were now completely under grace; the law of Christ (Gal 6:2), and that we were now a “Christ centered” church, fulfilling the law by loving one another (Gal 5:14). The sign of a true Christian, the church now stressed was John 13:34-35:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you love another. “By this all will know you are My disciples if you have love for one another.”
This new direction had such a deep impact on me that I began to study and meditate on love and law and realized that if one walked in pure love there is no need for law. This will be laid out in the coming article: Love verses law. I went over and over 1Cor. 13:1-3 and how it stressed that even though you could possess all the gifts of God and not abide in love all is worthless. I remember treating a Christian missionary woman in physical therapy for an injured back in the days of these changes. She told me she had been running an orphanage in Canada for unwanted Indian children, and after her back was healed she was going down to South America to start an Indian orphanage there. I remember being so moved by this. Surely I thought this woman was a true Christian for she believed in Christ and was laying down her life for others as the Lord commanded. I reflected on Mother Theresa and how she gave her entire life to the poorest in India. Surely she must be a Christian even though she prayed to a dead woman (Mary); for I still believed in the mortality of the soul. Truly there were true Christians in traditional Christianity as the WWCOG proclaimed! The church began to embrace Sunday as the weekly day of worship and Christmas and Easter as acceptable holidays of worship; for we were now “free" to worship Christ apart from the works of the law. The church that once accused mainstream Christianity as being the harlots of Rev. chapter 17 was now reaching out and embracing mainstream Christianity, and mainstream Christianity was, for the most part welcoming the Worldwide Church of God into "the body of Christ." At this time I accepted the changes of Sunday as the weekly N.T. day of church worship and the mainstream Christian holidays as acceptable days to worship Christ, believing if God could cleanse sinful man, then He could cleanse a sinful pagan holiday by them being “Christ centered,” but my wife had reservations about worshipping Christ on these holidays, instead at the most wanting to celebrate them as secular days. This belief of hers would later have a tremendous impact on me when I finally did an in depth study into what the bible and Christ revealed about these holidays. The church also now believed as many other mainstream Christian organizations that the weekly physical seventh day Sabbath we used to keep was the Old Testament shadow of the future eternal spiritual rest in Christ upon belief in Him noting Col. 2:16-17 and Hebrews chapters 3 and 4. Although differing in many doctrines, the church emphasized the core doctrine of Christianity: that Jesus was the Son of God and that we were to love one another, and that Jesus would clarify these lesser doctrines at His second coming. The church also took up the mainstream doctrine of the Trinity. Although we were wrong on some of our old doctrines; keeping many of them in the letter of the law, I still felt there were doctrines that we had that were right and true; such as the mortality of the soul in Ezek. chapter 18, the resurrection of the dead in ICor. 15:12-28, the inheritance and reward of the saints being kings and priests on the earth and not in heaven in Rev. 6:9-10, and the eventual salvation of most, if not all of mankind through the shadow of the seven annual yearly Sabbaths manifested through the saving acts of Jesus Christ in Lev. chapter 23. I absolutely did not believe the doctrines of the immortal soul, the reward of heaven for the righteous, and of eternal torture in hellfire for the unsaved. Again, at this time in the mid-1990’s and into 2001, I still believed that the main sign of a Christian was belief in Christ and loving others with the love of Christ. It appeared to me at the time that all Christianity had truth mixed with errors, but held the main truth that Jesus was the Christ and that we were to demonstrate that belief through the love of the brethren noted in 1John 3:23.
I did an in depth study of Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 and in deed as the church proclaimed, I saw the weekly physical Sabbath was the shadow of the future eternal spiritual Sabbath rest in Christ upon belief in Him. Now if the weekly Sabbath was the shadow of the future eternal Sabbath rest in Christ in the O.T., so I thought must be the seven annual yearly Sabbaths that were fulfilled in the past and were yet going to be fulfilled in the future in 2Col. 2:16-17. I re-examined Lev. 23:1-44 and was astonished to realize that the seven annual festivals were actually seven stages that composed the weekly Sabbath. In other words the weekly Sabbath was actually composed of seven parts and those parts made up the whole of this future spiritual Sabbath, and God was at one step at a time through the seven annual Sabbaths going to bring all of mankind into this seventh day eternal spiritual Sabbath rest in Christ. This will also be explained in the article: The eternal Sabbath rest for all of mankind in seven stages. Now as accepted more by traditional Christianity through the renunciation of our errors, I thought we in turn would be able to share some of our doctrines of truth to them. This I soon found out that this was not to be! What was I thinking? What was I drinking?
Some time in the late 1990’s at the beginning of one of our Sunday church services it was announced that the church was withdrawing it’s belief in the annual yearly seven Sabbaths as the days that pointed to God’s saving work for all mankind through Christ. Oh no, I thought, here we go! The church announced that these days represented saving acts by God to ancient Israel from Egypt and did not pertain to us. After all we were now a “New Testament church” and these Old Testament festivals did not pertain to us; plus it was told to us the meaning of them were to vague for us to really know what they foreshadowed. WHAT? The Passover wasn’t vague to me. Did not Christ die on that very day some 1,500 years after it was instituted in Egypt? What about the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Did not Jesus say He was the bread that came down from heaven to give life to the world and that if anyone would eat this bread they would never die, or more properly rendered would not be dead forever as noted in John 6:32-33, 48-51? Then there was the Feast of Pentecost, Feast of Weeks, or Feast of First Fruits. Was the shadow of this festival vague? Was it not fulfilled on that very day by the apostles and the few of Jesus' followers at that time 1,500 years after God commanded the Israelites to keep it in Lev. 23:9-21? How about the Feast of Trumpets? Was this just a vague O.T. festival celebrating the deliverance of ancient Israel? What about Matt. 24:31 describing the return of Christ to the Earth?:
“And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."
Then there is 1Cor. 15:51-52:
"Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed-in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed."
Sounds like this feast was indeed a foreshadowing of the second coming of Christ and the first resurrection of the saints to me! Other scriptures that describe this event are in 1Thes. 2:16 and Rev. 11:15. I didn’t realize how important these doctrines were to me until they were being removed by the church. In the back of my mind I was wondering if being a Christian was truly just belief and love. It seemed to me that the WWCOG was moving all their doctrines toward mainstream Christianity. I never realized how important these doctrines were to me besides belief in Christ and loving one another until they were being changed! Now this I also realized and conveyed to others in the church that when a major doctrine was removed it would lead to a doctrinal vacuum and allow another doctrine dealing with the same subject to replace it. Now that the doctrine of the salvation of all mankind through Christ foreshadowed by the seven annual O.T. Sabbaths was cast into the spiritual trash can, there was basically only one doctrine to replace it: the mainstream doctrine of eternal gruesome torture in hellfire. Soon after this; again in the late 1990’s, it was announced at church that heaven was a state of being, and that even though the believer inherited the earth, it was really heaven he was inheriting. One by one the doctrines that I thought could be shared in the spirit or reality of Christ with other denominations (I must have been nuts to believe this to begin with) were being abandoned completely for mainstream Christian doctrines. In the back of my mind I had drawn a line in the sand that if the church took up the doctrine of eternal hellfire for the unsaved and those who never heard the gospel, it would probably be the end for me and my family as members in the Worldwide Church of God.
In the spring of 2000 I gave my first, and in the end my only sermon (I was chosen to train for lay ministry) in the church on the five components of God’s love, the shadow or outline form of God’s love identified in Ex. 34:6 that was fulfilled later by the reality: Jesus at his first coming. The fifth and last component of His love, truth, went way over my head in it’s true meaning of the identity of the pure worshipers of Christ; that if realized at that time may have saved my wife and I years of drifting in spiritual limbo.
Some time shortly after the sermon I gave, the pastor of our church gave a sermon on the resurrection of the dead and how it didn’t really mean being raised from an unconscious state, but at death the saints were received into heaven. Wow, here came the doctrine of the immortality of the soul! I thought the scriptures he used and the arguments he gave for it were so bad in explaining this pagan doctrine. I and my wife were sitting in our seats astonished at what we were hearing! We were being eased into the doctrine of the immortality of the soul from the past announcement in church of the definition of our future state of being in heaven once risen from the dead, or being alive in the kingdom of God on the earth (Rev. 5:10). I don’t remember all the scriptures he used that day for his argument, but I do remember near the end of the sermon these scriptures to describe what he, and the headquarter church I guess, explained what the resurrection of the dead meant:
"But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years (Rev. 20:5-6)."
Now after our pastor read these scriptures, he asked the congregation what these scriptures meant about the resurrection, and several people in the congregation yelled out that these scriptures meant to be "raised with Christ in baptism." I’m almost 100% sure that these church members were approached sometime before the sermon and asked to shout out this response to help convince the congregation that this was what these scriptures implied, therefore helping to convince the congregation of the immortality of the soul. I say right here and now it was one of the worst sermons I ever heard in trying to connect the dots to make a point clear. Now it was only a question of when, and not if we were given the sermon on the “truth” of the eternal torment of the wicked and unbeliever in hellfire; because now that the immortality of the soul was our doctrine, there had to be a place where the immortal soul went immediately upon death; to eternal reward in heaven, or eternal punishment in hellfire!
In the spring of 2001 sometime around May, our pastor began a sermon telling the congregation that the doctrine of universalism, the doctrine the church had professed that most, if not all mankind would eventually be saved was false! He went on to explain that the true destination of the wicked; those who had never been called, or never heard of the name who could save them were condemned to eternal torture in hellfire! Just as I thought, get rid of one doctrine and it creates a doctrinal vacuum that will soon be replaced by another, AND HERE IT FINALLY WAS! It had to come since we now were instructed in the immortality of the soul; where upon death you were sent to heaven or hell. The doctrine of eternal torment in hell; if you think about it,probably means 99% of all humanity who ever lived have and will end up there, for in truth most traditional Christians are nominal at best, let alone the billions of people who have practiced idolatry in the past as other non-Christian religions do to this day. What a great work of salvation God has been and is now doing according to traditional Christianity!!! I recently asked one co-worker at work who was Catholic if she ever read the bible and she replied: Rick, I’m a Catholic for $#@ sake, I go to Church two times a year! The conversation by the way was about the paganism of Christmas in 2007 at the time of that holiday season. Again, I do not remember all the scriptures our pastor used, but again, at least to me it was simply an awful sermon on proving the doctrine of eternal punishment in hellfire. The scriptures I do remember our pastor using to prove his argument near the end was in Rom. 9:15-18:
For He says to Moses “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name may be declared throughout all the earth." Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
In other words those who do not believe or did not have that opportunity to be saved would be condemned to eternal torture in hell. Our pastor went on to say that it was his responsibility to his congregation to “preach the truth” and eternal punishment in hell was the truth, and exhorted the congregation to refute any arguments a universalist might have against the doctrine of eternal punishment in hellfire. Apparently he had forgotten the key to understanding how to piece together the doctrines of the bible as testified by God in Isa. 8:9-10:
“Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, Here a little and there a little.”
And again in Isa. 28:13:
"But the word of the Lord was to them, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a little,…"
To fully understand a doctrine you cannot stand on one scripture. An example of this can be found in Joel 2:32:
"And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
So does this scripture mean that all people have to do is confess Jesus and be saved? Of course not! There is confession of Jesus as your Savior along with repentance from your evil sinful nature, and from then on to walk in spirit and truth with the power of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ (Gal. 2:20) among other things written in other parts of the Bible. Again, back to the sermon; my wife and I were again astonished at what we heard and after the sermon we approached our pastor who sat in front of us and asked why he did not finish the theme of Romans chapter 9 which culminated in Rom. 11:29-33, where God would have mercy to salvation upon all; both to Israel and the Gentiles:
"For the gifts of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God (Gentiles), yet now have obtained mercy through their disobedience (Israel), even so these also have now have been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all (the whole world) to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all (eventual salvation for all mankind). Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!"
We were basically brushed off, and that basically was the beginning of the end of my membership and fellowship in the Worldwide Church of God. I attended sporadically for the next few months then completely dropped out. My wife attended a little longer on and off then she to dropped out. One year later my pastor came to visit me to encourage me to return to church, and while there denied that he ever gave a sermon on eternal punishment in hellfire. He may have said this because at the time the church published a booklet that I was sent that stated that God probably would provide some sort of salvation for the lost and uncalled. This in reality to me makes me think they (WCOG) still know the truth of the plan of salvation of Christ through the shadow of the seven annual Old Testament Sabbaths, but for the sake of risking not blending in with traditional Christianity they, I believe, had stated the doctrine in a subtle way without trying to ruffle traditional Christianity’s feathers. Once he said this about his sermon at my house the conversation was basically over.
The year was basically early 2002 and my wife and I found ourselves spiritually adrift and alone. Younger church members and friends around our age we used to fellowship with had earlier left the church for more “spiritual” congregations or to experience more “spiritual experiences” such as being “baptized in the Spirit” or to find congregations that better fit their and their families needs. Here was my dilemma; I felt I had two choices at the time; traditional Christianity which taught salvation in Christ through grace but in which taught many doctrines I didn’t believe or see in the Bible, or the splintered Sabbath keeping churches that came out of the WCOG that continued to hold many of the doctrines I believed in, but attached many of the Old Testament doctrines (letters of the spirit of law) to salvation along with the belief in Christ which the apostle Paul clearly condemned the Galatians for doing. I absolutely saw that such religious organizations as Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormon Church were absolutely apostate! For years I would go back and forth in studies thinking that the Sabbath 10 Commandment keeping churches were correct, then I would study more and change my mind, thinking that traditional Christian churches were correct, and I and my wife even attended a few of their churches in the Youngstown, Ohio area but never felt like we fit in, plus I just couldn’t attend a church that taught such doctrines as the Trinity, heaven or eternal hellfire, and if my wife and I tried to share any of our beliefs with the people in those congregations, I am sure we would have been looked upon and cast out as heretics. During the time after 2003, my personal prayer and studies began to become more sporadic, and as this happened some of the sins of my past began to take root in me once again. I began swearing at work, drinking more heavily, especially at social gatherings to the point of drunkenness, but there was one sin from my youth that really began to dominate my life to the point where depression became severe, and down the road toward 2006 the contemplation of suicide became more dominant in my thoughts. I would try to pray but the sin, a stronghold now of Satan would cause me to fall, and I would give up and quit praying or studying for long periods of time.
I remember one night thinking, what a mess Christianity seemed to be in a state of. Where was the church Jesus said he would build, and that the gates of hades(the grave) would never prevail against it? On one hand there were churches that that I saw that had true doctrines but were legalistically binding Old Testament shadow rituals on people no longer required along with the confession of Jesus, and on the other hand there was mainstream Christianity (thousands of denominations) that taught grace through belief in Christ, but were full doctrines I knew were not true. Then there were all those weird ministers on T.V. with bizarre behaviors and creepy rituals like Benny Hinn that I’m sure make Jesus a turn off for many people. There were the religious hucksters such as Joyce Myers who had all the time in the world to write book after book on every aspect of the word of God and how it dealt with different aspects and trials of peoples lives, and through the peddling of these books for profit she had reaped millions and millions of dollars from sincere but gullible people. I looked at a book shelf one day and must have seen at least five of her books with her picture on the covers with clothes on that would make a queen on a throne seethe with jealousy. Then there was her giant mansion, giant swimming pools, water falls and guest houses acquired by her peddling of the Word of God for her own profit which is absolutely condemned in the Bible. I’m sure the apostle Paul would be impressed with how she and others like her preach the word and gospel of our Lord to the masses as he did. Do these above examples sound like Paul in his ministry of the preaching of the gospel in Acts 20:33-34?:
"I have coveted no ones silver or gold or apparel. Yes you yourselves know that these hands (his own) provided for my necessities, and for those who were with me,…"
And in 1Cor. 4:9-13 Paul testified:
"For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong. You are distinguished, but we are dishonored! Even to this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed (wonder if Joyce ever read that one), and beaten, and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands(earning their living apart from the preaching of the word). Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure it; being defamed, we entreat. We have been made the filth of the world, the off scouring of all things until now."
Sounds like the modern day prominent minister of today; doesn’t it? How about Jesus who made all things through God? Did He live like a fat cat through His ministry like many of the prominent ministers of this day and age? One man, a scribe came to Him and said in Matt. 8:19-21:
“Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay His head.”
And in 2Cor. 8:9, Paul made this statement about Christ:
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty you might become rich."
I wonder if Paul ever said to the Galatians: "For ten dollars a piece you may have my exciting eye opening epistle that will instruct you in how you are not justified by the works of the Law, but by faith in Christ, and with a five dollar bonus I will reveal the nine fruits of God’s Spirit in this knowledge packed epistle that if walked in will lead you to a spiritually joyous prosperous life! The word of God has become big, big business for monetary gain. I’m on a big rant, but this was how I felt at the time; thousands of denominations with different doctrines, ministers living millionaire lives off the word of God, enough to make you want to throw up; my wife and I would often say!
It was in the fall of 2007 when I decided to begin to deal with these sins that I had fallen back into. I made up my mind that no matter how bad I screwed up or sinned, I was not going to cease from prayer or studying God's word. I would get down on my knees with the bible in front of me and pray and read. When I was out in the yard working, I would put a set of headphones on and play nothing but Christian music on CD's just to keep God and Christ on my mind (my mind continually races and the result has been severe insomnia for years), then later I bought the whole NKJV of the Bible on CD, and if I was in the car, working in the yard, or the house, I would listen to it. You see, I had heard a sermon tape years ago from a Promise Keepers convention that the only way an obsessive person weighed down in sin could overcome was to become absolutely obsessed with God and Christ, and this is what I did, and slowly I felt that as I was drawing near to God, He was drawing near to me (Jas. 4:8), and the bondage of sin I could feel was slowly being lifted from me. Not only was this happening, but God was beginning to open my mind to the state of the whole mess of so called Christianity, and who the true few elect of God were AT THIS TIME. I know, I'm another one of the thousands of nuts on the internet along with the thousands of Christian denominations claiming to know and have the truth of God and the bible. BUT BE INFORMED AND WITNESSED HERE, and if you read the article: The Great Falling Away, these thousands of denominations and Christian Internet sites are going to over time, possibly many years, as the Lord delays His second coming, fall away from belief in the true Creator God and the Lord Jesus as Savior, culminating in the annihilation of what is left of their mother, the Catholic Church (Rev. 17:15-17) by a man who will not tolerate any religious organizations (women, Dan. 11:37). So as all these thousands of denominations that have cropped up over time, will over time die out! In the end, at Christ’s return it will come down to two small groups of believers and those who hear and believe the gospel they continue to hold fast to and re-proclaim the second coming of Christ and His second coming.
God began, in late 2007 to reveal to me that the pure and undefiled believers are the ones who walk in the spirit of the Old Testament law which is none other than the revelation of Jesus Christ, the shadow or the outline of the Old Testament and law that He would fulfill when He came the first time and what He would yet do in the future for all of mankind. In the law of Moses, Psalms, and prophets, they reveal the hidden truth and knowledge of Christ. Just about all the physical acts and many of the events in the Old Testament God had the Israelites perform were non other than events that shadowed what Christ would do when He would come to the earth both times. I now fully understood what Jesus meant in Mat. 5:17-20:
"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy, BUT TO FULFILL (I came to do it all for you and through you). “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled (till I fulfill all things, not you)."
In other words I will do it all, I will accomplish all things, not you. I will fulfill the righteous requirements of the law in you, and none of it will be done by you and your own effort. I AM THE REALITY OF THE SHADOW OF THE LAW. I am your spiritual Sabbath rest for eternity(ages abiding) and by you keeping the weekly letter of it will not make you righteous. I am the real Passover that cleanses you of your sin, I am the one who will sweep all the leavening (sin) out of your life forever and fulfill the Days Of Unleavened Bread in you, and you keeping the letter of these seven days will not make you righteous. I am the one who will dwell in you fulfilling Pentecost, the Feast of First Fruits or Feast of Weeks. I am the one who will command my angel to blow the trumpet and I will intervene and save the world, and by you keeping that day as a shadow of My mighty work on that very day will not make you righteous. I will fulfill the Royal Law in you by My and My Father’s Spirit dwelling in you. I am the one who fulfills the law of clean and unclean meats by giving you the power by My Spirit to discern between clean and unclean doctrine. I am the one who circumcises your heart spiritually. God made me realize that we were in the spirit or true intention (Jesus Christ) of the shadow of Him, the Old Covenant and law. I realized that the letter or written code of the law was done away, but the hidden knowledge of Christ in that letter or code; again what He had done and was yet going to do in the future was still true and going to come to pass! Even though I no longer was required to keep the Day of Atonement, this event was still going to take place through Christ, was going to be fulfilled by Christ, and was an event that would be for the world at that time in the future who would come under the complete rule of Christ and accept Him as His Lord and Savoir. I already have accepted Christ; that day and event of salvation would be for another group of people at another time in the future after the return of Christ.
I now fully realized what the Worldwide Church of God had done. They threw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater! They rightly threw or cast out the letters of the O.T. laws they were keeping that were abolished at the manifestation of the reality: Jesus Christ, but they also wrongly cast out the knowledge of what these Old Testament letter events foreshadowed, what Jesus accomplished and would accomplish in the future, and therefore caused them to drift into the great heresies of the Babylonian Mystery Religion of Rev. chapter 17. What a great collapse of the work and church that Herbert W. Armstrong built, but believe it or not because of his moral flaws and the preaching of a false gospel this was prophesied by God in the bible which will be discussed in a future article.
Now what about the many splinter groups of The Worldwide Church of God, such as the United Church Of God, International Church of God or the Restored Church of God, among the many other splintered groups who still hold to the Ten Commandments as the core of the teachings of Christ, especially the physical seventh day Sabbath, and continue to keep certain other requirements of the Old Covenant for salvation along with the belief in the reality; Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? They always point to this scripture as proof that the Ten Commandments, and certain aspects of the law are still in effect:
"The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness’ sake; He will magnify the law and make it honorable (Isa. 52:21)."
They always say that Jesus came and made the law, the Ten Commandments in it’s Old Covenant form and certain other aspects of the Old Covenant (Ex. 34:28) larger in importance and more weightier. Their example would be something like this. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy (Old Testament). Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy (New Testament magnified). Now think about this. Why do we usually have to magnify something? We magnify things to see them for what they truly are or truly look like. What you think you may be seeing with the naked eye may not truly be what it is the object you are observing. We magnify things larger that we can see what they really are so as to identify or clarify what they truly are. So it is true with the Spirit of the law: Jesus Christ. Take again the example of the physical seventh day Sabbath. The splintered churches of the WWCOG believe Jesus came and made the letter of this law more binding, but Jesus said I came to fulfill the law, and so clarified or magnified what the true meaning of the Old Testament Sabbath meant (Math. 12:28-29 and Hebrews chapters 3 and 4), the spiritual rest in Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul even testified of being in the Spirit of the law:
“And we have such trust through Christ of God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter (shadow of Christ) but of the Spirit (reality, Jesus Christ); for the letter kills (attempted works of righteousness by the works of the shadow, the Old Testament law); but the Spirit (Jesus the reality of the letter of that law) gives life (2Cor. 3:5-6)."
Now read further in 2Cor. 3:15-17:
"But even to this day, when Moses (shadow of Christ) is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord (reality of the Old Testament shadow) the veil is taken away."
Now notice what Paul says in verse six:
"Now the Lord is the Spirit; (reality of what the Old Testament Covenant and law foreshadowed)."
Now I was beginning to understand what Paul meant by walking in the Spirit(Jesus Christ).
In Rom 2:29 Paul also said:
"...but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit and not in the letter."
And one of the strongest scriptures of all that points to Jesus as the shadow or fulfillment of the law is in the gospel of John chapter 5:45-47:
"Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you-Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
Now did Moses write about Jesus directly? Of course not! But he wrote about Jesus in outline form, in the written code, in the letter that the leaders of his day could not figure out because they did not have the Spirit to open their minds and were purposely blinded by God.
Now again, what of the WWCOG under Mr. Armstrong, and the splinter groups that continued to follow his doctrines after the leadership that took over after his death and did away with them? My wife would tell me often about her Aunt who was a member of the WWCOG for years before the changes and what a godly woman she was, and believe me their are many godly members that I knew and know that are very godly that attend these splinter churches to this day. She felt she was a true Christian even though much of her beliefs and acts of worship were based in the Old Testament letter of the law, again the shadow of the reality of Jesus Christ, along with the belief in Him as the reality of the shadow. I pondered their beliefs and doctrines. This fact was plain, they were, and are completely out of, and have nothing to do with traditional Christianity, which a little later through study of the third and forth churches (ecclesias) of the second chapter of Revelation, I truly and frightenedly realized the Babylon harlot of Rev. chapter 17 were polluting the true believers of Christ with pagan doctrines. These splinters also do not involve themselves and mix their faith with the corrupt politics of this world. These many splintered Sabbath keeping churches of God seemed to have half their faith in the Old Covenant (again the shadow of the future: Jesus) and half their faith in the reality; belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior for salvation, and one thing I know being a former member of the WWCOG before the changes, many greatly boasted and rested on the fact that they had the knowledge of the Old Testament shadow of Jesus Christ and the certain parts of the the letter of these laws they kept physically, such as the weekly Sabbath and the annual Holy Day Sabbaths and what they foreshadowed. They felt they were rich in knowledge. Remember Herbert Armstrong taught the keeping of the Ten Commandments (Old Covenant: Ex. 34:28), annual yearly Sabbaths along with belief in Jesus as Savior was binding for salvation on Christians with the weekly Sabbath being the identifying sign of the true Christian. I pondered and pondered over this because of what my wife said about her Aunt and then one day it hit me! OH MY!! The WWCOG under Mr. Armstrong and all these splinter groups were, and are truly part of the Church of God! They are the church identified by Jesus as the church of Laodicea. Think about it if you can! They have half their faith in the Old Covenant, the shadow of Jesus Christ, and half their faith in the New Covenant; the reality; Jesus Christ. They are neither cold by having part of their faith in Christ, the reality who fulfilled and will yet fulfill the Spirit or reality of the Old Covenant law, nor are they hot because of having part of their faith in the shadow of the Old Covenant law; Jesus Christ. They are between the shadow and the reality. THEY ARE LUKEWARM! This has to be one of the most astounding hidden truths of the bible. The table of end time Biblical events are beginning to be set! The man Herbert W. Armstrong, who thought raised up the church of Philadelphia, proclaiming the “true” gospel of the kingdom of God that would culminate with the return of Christ in his lifetime (he died 25 years ago) is actually the father of the modern Laodicean churches of God! This church actually has its roots in the oldest church of all, beginning at Jerusalem! This truth will absolutely be laid out in the coming articles: The Church Of Laodicea: They Exist Today.
What about the status of mainstream Christianity and the claim by the WWCOG that they were true Christians that followed Christ after they dismantled the doctrines of Herbert Armstrong. The time was about Nov. 2006, and at that time my wife and I were still celebrating Christmas, but not as a religious holiday. Something drove me to start studying the heresies that Christ pointed out in the third and forth church eras of Rev. chapter 2. I studied the meaning of what the doctrine of the Nicolaitans was and discovered they were people who separated themselves and rose above the common lay church members, claiming to be holier, even dressing differently, and exercised dominion and authority over them as the Gentile leaders that Jesus warned his disciples not to do in Luke 22:24-26:
But there was also rivalry among them, as to which of them should be considered the greatest. And He said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority are called benefactors. But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you; let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves."
As the Roman Catholic Church developed, they developed a hierarchy of clergy that separated themselves from the common lay members culminating in the Pope, proclaimed as the one who sits in the seat of Christ on Earth, and he and the clergy, instead of acting as shepherds over their flocks and dwelling among them (1Pet 5:1), separated themselves and became their benefactors and lorded over their flocks, a practice Jesus said he hates (Rev. 2:6). You can see this same doctrine today, not only with the Catholic Church but with traditional Christianity in general. Many of these ministers go by the title of Reverend or Father, where as the apostle Paul simply went by the name of Paul. Many of these churches clergies are still set up as separate from the common lay members. And again, many ministers in this modern age have reaped millions of dollars from peddling the Word of God; a practice condemned by Peter and Paul, and have also become the benefactors over the common lay members.
Now the clincher study I then did that opened my eyes to traditional Christianity as false, and was the Babylonian Mystery Religion was the study of the church of Thyatira. These Christians were allowing heresies to creep in among them and allowed themselves to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols at the hands of a prophetess called Jezebel. Now the book of Revelation was written in symbols and a woman in the Bible and Revelation is identified as a church as in Rev. chapter 12 and the fallen woman in Rev. chapter 17, and this committing of sexual immorality and eating (spiritually) things sacrificed to idols was symbolic of some kind of spiritual idolatry this woman was causing the followers of Christ to commit, and therefore pollute their walk with Him. I took the advice of Herbert Armstrong I learned years ago in the WWCOG and would study this allowing the bible to interpret itself.
Now who was this woman Jezebel? She is known and recognized as the most notoriously wicked woman in the Old Testament who married the wicked king Ahab of the kingdom of Israel; the daughter of king Ethbaal of Sidonia, and high priest of Baal, and by studying her in 2Kings chapter 16, I realized she brought the most abominable, and detestable forms of idol worship into Israel; Baal or sun worship and Asherah, worship of the queen of heaven: Semiramis of ancient Babylon (1Kings 16:29-33 and 1Kings 18: 19). Some of the different translations for Asharah according to the nations she was worshipped in are Ishtar, Isis, Ashtoreth, Astarte, and the English translation of this word? None other than the word Easter! And Baal the sun God who required the sacrifice of children by burning them in fire had many names in the Old Testament one called Baal-Bereth or lord of the fir tree (evergreen or modern day Christmas tree). This sun worship and Asherah idol worship that Jesus was condemning that the church of Thyatira was allowing to creep in among them had to be none other than the Catholic Church (Jezebel) snaring the undefiled believers of God into keeping the idolatry of the birth of the son god Baal known today as Christmas, the counterfeit watered down so called spiritual celebration of the birth of the Son of God, Jesus Christ at the time of the winter solstice, and also the worship of Semiramis (changed by the Catholics to Mary the mother of Jesus). I realized again that the Old Testament also in this manner appeared to be a shadow of the N.T. As it went with the church in the wilderness, Old Testament Israel, so it went with the N.T. church with both quickly corrupting themselves soon after their instructions in righteousness were given them with the Old Covenant by God in the Old Testament and the New Covenant by Jesus in the New Testament. As just about most of Old Testament Israel quickly corrupted themselves with the idols of the heathen people around them in the promised land that God commanded to keep separate from when they entered it; so it was with New Testament Christianity as it spread out from Israel where almost all incorporated the pagan idolatrous customs (cloaking them in the name of Christ and God) around them from the heathens God commanded them to be separate from. Notice what Paul said in 2Cor. 6:14-18:
"Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness. And what accord does Christ have with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with Idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said. “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore “come out from among them and be ye separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.” I will be a Father to you and you shall be my sons and daughters, say’s the Lord Almighty.”
Now read 1Cor. 10:19-21:
"What am I (Paul) saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? But I say that the things that the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of demons."
By reading these heresies that took place in the third and forth church groups it appeared that most who confessed Christ as Savior did not take heed to the admonishment of the scriptures above commanded by God and the Babylonian Mystery Religion from that time on overran just about all of what is called Christianity. This study of the Old Testament and New Testament Jezebels and what they brought into the Old Testament church of Israel and the New Testament spiritual Israel almost made the flesh peel off my bones. This was the nail in the coffin for me that traditional Christianity, although confessing Christ was according to the word of God, full of pagan practices and lies cloaked in the name of Christ and God. They had, and are fulfilling the words of our Lord in Luke 13:23-24.
Then one said to Him (one of his disciples), Lord are their few who are saved (in this present age). And He (Jesus) said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gait, for many, I say to you will seek to enter and will not be able."
There are today just over two billion people who profess to be Christians, many sincere, but most appear nominal, and Jesus said that many would seek to enter life but would not be able to. Satan has so polluted traditional Christianity with pagan lies that it has caused them to stumble and enter the broad gait. Although they believe in an Almighty Creator and Jesus as Savior, what doctrines they teach about them are false from the doctrine of the Trinity to the sick minded pagan doctrine of eternal gruesome torture in hellfire. It is God and Christ who create and proclaim what is truth, not man. It is God who dictates what pure and clean worship of Him involves, not man. 1John 2:21 says:
"I have written you because you know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth."
The words of Duet. 12:29-32 still ring true today in the New Testament church of Israel:
“When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to disposes, and you displace them and dwell in their land. Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and you do not enquire after their God’s, saying, ‘how did these nations serve their God’s? I also will do likewise’ (religion of ancient Babylon). You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord which He hates they have done to their God’s for they burn even their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods."
Now Jesus himself proclaimed in John 4:23-24:
"But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him."
I was completely fooled when the WWCOG began their slide into the Babylonian Mystery Religion thinking along with them that we had “freedom” to worship Christ the way we wanted as long as it was “Christ centered.” I’d like to ask the leadership of the WWCOG or any head of any mainstream Christian denomination if it would be O.K. to worship Christ with the customs of, and the keeping of the Muslim month of Ramadan as long as if we made it “Christ centered.” I don’t have to answer what they would say to that. You know what they would say,
but yet they keep these pagan holidays for Christ that have much more sinister origins and rituals than those of the Muslim faith; although keeping these pagan festivals now for nearly sixteen or seventeen hundred years has caused them to do it in complete ignorance and basically is still kept by most as the time of the riotous drunken festival the Romans kept 2,000 years ago; or if they do know there origin, keep them because their relatives, friends, and because the rest of the traditional Christian world does. They are afraid to go against the majority and be looked on as outcasts to those around them. They desire "the praise of men more than the praise of God."
After I, through the Spirit I hope, realized that the true and undefiled believers were those who confessed Christ, walked in the spirit or intention of the law which again is the revelation of Jesus Christ, I tried to convey these things to my wife, and said that there were others out there who proclaimed the same faith, although few, but she had a hard time with this; thinking there were no people out there that appeared to believe the same way, who were out of Babylon (this world), did not keep some aspects of the letter of the law or who were not riddled with paganism until about a week later when she came upon a website called L. Ray Smith: Those Who Contradict where the website taught the true walk of Christ was by the spirit of the law; (and have a small fellowship of believers) which again for the hundredth time is the revelation of Jesus Himself fulfilling all things; what He did and what He will yet do in the future of mankind. After several months we found a few other websites where the same truth was taught and this seemed to be their pattern. Most had appeared to come out of the Worldwide Church of God, probably after they made the changes to mainstream Christianity. They probably saw that the letter of the law such as the seventh day physical Sabbath was indeed transformed or magnified to it’s true meaning of the spiritual eternal rest in Christ, and God also opened their eyes to the truth that Jesus is the spirit or reality of the entire Old Covenant law; where as many thousands of other members quit out of confusion and disillusionment, and the rest were blinded by Satan into mainstream Christianity, to join the great harlot and her offspring (Rev. 17:1-5). This was actually prophesied by God to happen to the work of Herbert Armstrong; again because of his moral corruption, a topic to be discussed in the third article on this site called The Church Of The Laodiceans: They Exist Today.
What sealed my faith in the few who walk in the spirit of the law today was studying the message of Jesus to the church of Sardis, the era or ecclesia I believe the scattered few unorganized true believers belong to at this very time as we near the end of the age, and that will soon give birth to the church of Philadelphia that will become a small organized, but very zealous group for Christ; probably mostly through intense persecution near, and at the very end of the age. I won’t go into to much detail here about the church of Sardis, but it is in the midst at this time where the Christian world has been almost completely overrun by the Babylonian Mystery Religion to the point where there are just a few pure and undefiled worshipers of Christ in the spirit of the law, the knowledge of Christ hidden in a mystery, and who have kept themselves spotless from these polluted great false Christian religions; nor do they entangle themselves and their faith with the corrupt politics of this world (Rev. 17:1-2). Let’s read what Christ says about this very, very tiny group of people in Rev. 3:1-5. I will write it from the Concordant Literal New Testament:
“And to the messenger of the ecclesia in Sardis write: Now this He is saying Who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: “I am aware of your acts, that you have a name that you are living but you are dead.”
This could mean He was saying that you are so small in number amongst two billion false Christians that it is as if you don’t exist. Jesus goes on in verse 2:
“Become watchful, and establish the rest (remnant believers) who were about to be dying; for I have not found your acts completed in the sight of my God."
This group has now been put on a watch, to hold the battle line in a time of moral decline and turning away from the truth of the existence of God and Jesus. Now this scripture of Jesus condemning the church for not completing it’s works or assignment by God disturbs me greatly. I know He is speaking of this very day and age when the world would be in a time of leisure, ease, prosperity and self indulgences without persecution, therefore because of a lack of total zeal for the work of Christ and tempted to be weighed down by the cares of this present life of physical prosperity, this church would almost fall away as the rest of the professing Christian world is currently doing and will continue to do from the belief that God and Jesus are real and exist. But they (Sardis) were given the command to watch and hold fast in a time that the world will be rapidly falling away from the truth. Again read our article The Great Falling Away for this eye opening truth that all of professing Christianity is currently falling away from the truth that Jesus is the Christ and that God exists! But it will not die out as pointed out in the book of Haggai. God’s Church or house will be rebuilt and become re-organized before the return of Christ. Now notice verse 4 of Rev. chapter 3:
"But you have a few (translated in the Greek as puny) names in Sardis who do not pollute their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.”
What does this scripture actually mean. I found the answer in Rev. 14, verses 4 and 5:
"These are the ones who were not defiled with women (traditional Christianity and other Christian cults), for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being first fruits to God and to the Lamb." And in their mouth was found no guile, for they are without fault before the throne of God.''
Now the most common interpretation of these scriptures by traditional Christianity is that these are 144,000 Jewish men who will be unmarried and preach the gospel at the end of the age. This could be no further from the truth! Remember the symbol for a woman in the bible? It is the symbol of a church. These are both men and women who did not corrupt themselves or commit spiritual sexual fornication or immorality with the Babylon harlot churches of this world (Rev. 2:14,20) or commit fornication with the political systems of this world under the sway of Satan (Rev. 17:1-2 and Lk. 4:5-7), and the number 144,000 is also symbolic. They hold to the Lord Jesus as their Savior, Lord, and King, the fulfiller of all things, and are under His authority and government; the kingdom of God.
Now in conclusion, this is what I see through the inspiration of the Spirit of the current situation of the churches of God at this time; for I have prayed many times to God that if these articles and studies are not of the truth that He would not let them prosper and that the desire in me to write them would die; for the last thing I want to be is a deceiver. and above all do not want to peddle the Word of God for money to become physically rich through it as many do in this day and age. God did say in Proverbs 23:23:
"Buy the truth and do not sell it."
In other words buy it by studying it and giving your life to it, then share it freely with others. Jesus also said in Mat. 10:8:
“Freely you have received, freely give.”
In Acts 20:35 Jesus also said:
“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Lastly I do not want this website or the articles to come across with a “Thus sayeth the Lord” attitude. For as Paul said in 1 Cor. 13 we see in a glass darkly. As the time of Christ's return draws nearer the remnant will see things clearer. When and if there are errors discovered in the articles they will be pointed out and corrected.
My wife gave a good analogy of the history of the state of Christianity and what it’s going through right now. Last winter after a very strong wind storm, the cover of our above ground swimming pool blew off and fell into the pool. We were not able to get the cover back on. When it blew off the water was crystal clear but as the weather warmed over time through the spring months the pool became filthy with algae, rotting leaves, dirt and aquatic insects; the same fate of Christianity over the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years with the incorporation of idolatrous pagan lies and by corruption with the carnal governments of this world. Then when the time came to get the pool ready all that filth was slowly filtered out by the pool filter and getting into it and cleaning it manually, but over time the pool was restored to it’s crystal clear pure and clean state. So now is this process happening in the church of God. The churches of Laodicea, actually the oldest of all the churches of God in practice of worship; who have half their faith in the letter of the law and half their faith in the reality: Jesus Christ; for they are in between the letter and the reality; neither hot or cold but lukewarm, are now firmly established, originating from the work of Herbert Armstrong and the WWCOG before it became completely apostate. These groups came out of the Sabbath keeping churches, Herbert W. Armstrong; who, when he studied the word of God must have been so shocked at the filthy pagan state of traditional Christianity that he swung the pendulum completely the other way. He must have thought that since traditional Christianity kept such pagan holidays as Christmas and Easter, and worshipped on the day of traditional pagan sun worship; Sunday, that there must be days in the bible that God established to be kept, hence the binding of the letter of the law doctrines of the seven annual festival Sabbaths along with the keeping of the seventh day Old Testament letter Sabbath commands along with belief in Christ, thus the modern day church of Laodicea came into prominence. When Mr. Armstrong died and the church rightly saw the error of the binding of the Old Covenant with the New Covenant, and then sank into the Babylonian Mystery Religion, a few realized although the letter was no longer in force, the truth of what they stood for had come to pass in Christ and were yet going to be fulfilled by Christ in the future, and therefore retained this knowledge and began to walk in the spirit of the law which most importantly is the fulfillment of the royal law by the Holy Spirit, Christ in us (Gal. 2:20), "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" the very gospel and doctrine that the apostle Paul received from the Lord Jesus Himself (Gal.1:11-12) which was apparently overrun by the Catholic Church in the third and forth church eras basically bringing it to a halt , but now as my pool slowly became cleansed, the church is also re-emerging into the process of returning to it’s virgin undefiled state. An interesting aspect of what is going on is that most of this small group was born out of the church and churches that were in the same condition at it's start in Jerusalem (Acts. 15:1-5, and Acts 21:18-22). Again this website and my family are a small part, again a very small part of very small unorganized groups of Christians at this time who walk in the spirit of the law, Jesus Christ and do not entangle themselves in the false religions or politics of this world. This is our contribution to the church at this time to help the brethren not to fall into the fate of the professing Christian world which is in the process at this time of falling away from the belief in the Almighty God and the Savior Jesus. I will leave you with these scriptures in the book of Haggai chapters 1:1-14. This account of the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem after it’s destruction by the Babylonians. It is actually a symbol of the rebuilding of the church of God near the end of the age by a small remnant through the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit. I firmly believe that the material and moral decline of the U.S. and other lost nations of Israel happening at this present time along with coming persecution as the world abandons the belief in God and Christ over time will begin to help focus this scattered group of believers to come together and focus on what really matters; the rebuilding of the church of God, as God struck the Jews that returned to Jerusalem with material and physical plagues in the days of Haggai to motivate them to rebuild His physical temple that was destroyed when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, and took the Jews captives. Here is Haggai chapter 1:1-6:
In the second year of king Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying, “thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying: this people says, the time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house (spiritual house) should be built (or rebuilt).” Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses (look at the beautiful houses Americans live in today), and this (spiritual) temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways! “ You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat but do not have enough; You drink but are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, earns wages to put in a bag with holes.” Thus says the Lord of hosts: consider your ways! Go up to the mountains (a mountain is a symbol for a nation or kingdom in the Bible) and bring wood (converts called by God) and build the temple (church) that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified, says the Lord."
Now in verse 9 this is how my wife and I have been feeling this past year. Although we made more money this past year than ever it has literally slipped through our hands and we can’t even explain how or where it went, and now both our jobs may be in peril. Now notice verse 9:
“You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Says the Lord of hosts." Because of My house (church of God) that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house."
Now what does God really think of the temple of Solomon that was built for Him in Jerusalem? Go to Isa. 66:1:
Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest? For all these things My hand has made…"
He is talking here in Haggai about the restoration of the spiritual church being re-established near the end of the age! You can read the conclusion of this analogy in Hag. 2:15-19, where economic hardship would greatly influence the church to bring forth fruit (converts to God). This spring, after becoming very familiar with verse 9 of Haggai chapter I noticed all the people in my neighborhood landscaping their yards, fertilizing their grass, planting shrubs and flowers and so on; tending to their houses. I myself couldn’t do much because I was broke. But doesn’t that scripture seem to describe this day and age? Now the U.S. economy is now in decline as God in Deut. chapter 28 said it would for it’s growing immoral filth along with the world falling away from the belief in God and Christ. Now notice verse 12:
"Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant (few undefiled believers) of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him; and the people feared the presence of the Lord."
Now notice verse 14:
"So the Lord stirred up Zerbbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozedak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and worked on the house of the Lord (symbolic of the end time restoration of the COG)."
Remember these remnant few came out of the kingdom of Babylon and restored the physical temple of God; so at this present time this remnant has come out of this present day Babylonish world (Rev. 18:4-5), and will assist through Christ in rebuilding the spiritual house or church of God. In ending this article I pray that God would give us His wisdom and understanding in these scriptures to discern between truth and error of His holy Word in the coming years before Christ finally does return.