Remember those days of spending seven days in Mt Pocono, Lake of the Ozarks, The Dells, or Squaw Valley?
Remember driving down the freeway to your assigned Feast site and being passed up by other cars with FT stickers on them?
Remember seeing the pavement through the floor boards of your twenty year old car as you headed up the freeway? You knew angels were going to get you to the Feast site safely so you made a game out of counting road kill as you saw it pass underneath.
Remember the pride and excitement you felt as you got closer to the Feast site and started seeing all the signs on the hotels saying, :"Welcome Worldwide Church of God!"
Remember the hurricanes that turned back from Jekyll Island and pounded Cuba and caused myriads of deaths while you basked in the safety of a bouncing, rain soaked tent?
Remember how on the Last Great Day you breathed a sigh of relief. An end to the mind numbingly boring sermons was in sight!
No more long distance walks from the parking lot to the convention center in the rain. Oh the rain! You had never seen so much rain! Surely it was Satan trying to put a damper on the Feast.
No more picnic lunches between three services on holy days. No more standing in line at snack food stands in the parking lots for a cup of coffee or hot chocolate.
No more listening to other church members in restaurants asking the waitress if there was pork or shellfish in their food.
You would soon be heading home after gorging and drinking yourself into oblivion for seven days. Oh, sorry! You were not ministers so you could not afford to do that. You could not stay in Mt Airy Lodge, so you had to rent an efficiency cabin where you had to cook and prepare all your food. But that's another story.
Back to the Last Great Day.
Before you headed off to the final service you went and paid your hotel/motel bill. You had the kids look under all the furniture and beds for lost toys and clothing. You cleaned your unit as best as you could remembering that TRUE Christan's left things better than they found it. You packed your bags and loaded you kids into the car and headed off to the convention center (or tent.)
Then you sat there listening to a minister tell you to dump all of your access second tithe into the offering baskets since you would not be needing it anymore. You wondered how you would be able to pay for the gas and overnight stay on your way home, so you did not put a lot of money in the basket as waves of guilt swept over you.
You had a lump in your throat as the final hymn was sung, "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." then it was over.
But not quite yet though. An announcement had been made for all able bodied men and boys to help stack up and store all 10,000 folding chairs. A sweeping crew was to sweep the building. A restroom crew cleaned up the restrooms, and select men helped the ministers load their Lincolns and Buick Rivieras for their trip back home.
But little did you know you were pawns in Satan deceiving the Church by 'working' on The Last Great Day! How dare you pay your hotel bill, pack your clothes, clean up the convention center all before the sun went down!!! Grievous sinners! Reprobates! You are headed straight to the Lake of Fire! The Apostle has this to say about you:
To the Groups making up the Church of God
The Last Great Day, The Eighth Day of the Feast: Is a High Holy Day, Lev 23:36. It is a Holy Convocation. You shall do no servile work (work of any kind) therein.
For generations now, The Church of God has made it a practice to hold services early, on the Eighth Day; to facilitate the travel plans of their members. People claiming to be converted Godly people: have paid bills, packed belongings, cleaned their temporary dwellings and traveled on this High Holy Day. And their ministers have encouraged this in word and deed.
FOR SHAME: This is a DISGRACE and a blot on your garments. The Eternal will not hold you guiltless for defiling His Holy Time. Repent quickly and turn from this wickedness; lest ye be corrected.
What you say may be true, but since the calendar that was used was wrong and people kept the Last Great Day on the wrong day, everyone was breaking the non Ten Commandment Law anyway. If people keep following the Jewish calendar, in about 21,000 years, the Feast of Tabernacles will be kept during Christmas Week. The Jews know it is wrong, but can't do anything about it because they can't convene the Sanheidren. So by keeping Old Testament Laws, you can't actually keep the Old Testament Laws.
ReplyDeleteNot to worry.
Everyone will be happily keeping the Feast in the millennium, or else! Along with the animal sacrifices.
Which brings up the question, if you want to really keep the Feast, then why don't you gather and stand for 12 hours while the scrolls are read to you and take a break somewhere in between while the priests work the heave offerings and you can have a slab of beef for dinner. Be sure to bring your first tithe based on produce to the feast, including a tenth of the herd born since the last Feast.
No fair tithing on your wages.
And remember, you can give offerings, but there is no second or third tithe to be kept. You'll not find anyone counting their herd for the ninth and eighth animal. And oh, those fruit trees... how they screw up the tithe: Only once and it's everything -- what is it, in the 5th year?
Remember that if you don't do this right, God will be angry with you, since you will certainly be under the works of the law.
I'm not seeing much faith in this. It seems so mechanical, cut and dried -- almost as if it is for someone without the Holy Spirit trying to do works to be accepted of God. So where's the faith? It seems like it was all physical so people could learn from it in New Testament Times.
Anyone?
I agree, Douglas, and would hasten to add that these folks should be convening in Jerusalem, and perhaps assembling on the temple mount. However, even then, too much would still be missing!
ReplyDeleteGod has made it totally impossible to keep most of Old Covenant law, but that doesn't seem to stop some people! Rather than attempt to keep the law in a makeshift way, the Jews in Babylonian captivity fasted to commemorate the days on which the things which made it possible for them to conduct worship were destroyed! It was only when Zerubbabel's Temple was completed that they were once again able to be observant.
BB
It really doesn't make any difference when the followers keep the last great day, or any other day. As long as they have bosses("ministers"...THEIR "ministers")telling them when and where and why, then they will continue to step in line.How many people actually look at a calendar and try to figure it out, or even wonder why the day of atonement never falls on a Friday or a Sunday, or the why the feast of trumpets never falls on a Sunday, Wednesday or Friday, or why we never washed feet on a Saturday night, Monday night, or a Wednesday night."Our's is not to question why. Our's is just to do or die."
ReplyDeleteWow, did that ever bring back memories...everything was like you said to us oldtimers at Jekyll and Pocono..One thing I'll add...we drove 900 miles just to keep Pentecost in Detroit. At days end we werent allowed to hit the road till sunset while locals were gone home and having supper. Some dealm that was.
ReplyDeleteWe were three hundred miles round trip to Indianapolis when my mother first joined, then Cincinnati started and it was 200 miles round trip and then Dayton opened with 100 miles round trip. If we only knew what we do now! There is no way we could have ever afforded 900 miles! Sheesh!
ReplyDeleteI was a little kid when Jekyll Island started. I remember the hurricane approaching with howling wind and tremendous rain. Men were trying holding down the tent poles while GTA was preaching as lights on either side of him were bursting from water hitting them. Then the hurricane turned around and hit Cuba wrecking havoc, while the Church was giddy with delight that the Gentiles were suffering while God's people were having fun. Kind of sick!
Then was in Pocono's when they started it and we had the same thing, only this time a tornado. Of course it was all attributed to satan and we bought into that malarkey.
NO2HWA,
ReplyDeleteYour post brought back many memories. Like yourself, I was in attendance under the big tent in Jekyll Island the night Garner Ted spoke while the Hurricane was approaching. We could hardly hear over the sounds of pounding rain on the big tent. My brother was on tent flap duty, and his one and only suit got soaked.
The photos of Mount Pocono also brought back memories. I looked for myself or people I knew in the photos.
Thanks for posting.
Richard
Well, security isn't quite so tight at their F/Ts. A Bible-carrying person in business clothing with a horrible gas problem could easily sneak in and sit right up front for the sermon.
ReplyDeleteI hasten to point out that a converted person wouldn't do this, but.......
BB
I too think I was in that tent the night the rain came and it washed in all around the tent poles. I was very young. I still have fond memories of it all. And, for the record our car wasn't 20 years old and we had floorboards. Some of our fellow churchmembers even stayed at the Sheraton By the Sea. So to the bitter and dismayed over the past, all I can say is that I got some values out of it and learned from the comradery of it all if nothing else. The bitter ones here remind me much of my brother who is still in a wad over HWA even after all these years. Let it go. Pretend you learned a lesson and go on.
ReplyDelete