Work, work, work!
Passover and Unleavened Bread are over, and sin has already entered their lives. Imagine that!
Why is it that COG members are ALWAYS doing something wrong? You never hear a sermon on "well done, thou good and faithful servants!" Members are always doing something wrong. Jesus' return keeps getting delayed because of the sinning COG members. After all, it is NEVER the leadership's fault because they are above reproach.
Overcoming lawlessness
Before getting into that, let’s first focus on the Days of Unleavened Bread. We live in times that can be considered tumultuous and uncertain, exemplified by the U.S. economy and what is going on with the talks of tariffs and other issues that dominate our news.
But, we remember, too, that we are living in a time of “lawlessness,” as has become more fully evident over the past four years. But, while there seems to be a trend (in the United States at least) toward an ideology of traditional law, order and “morality,” we know there are forces at work which strongly oppose that.
If we are not careful and watchful, these attitudes of “lawlessness” can pervade even those in the Church. It is not that any of us think that we would intentionally disregard or speak against what the Bible says. But our words, supported by our actions, must always reflect commitment to the Bible and its principles.
As we rehearsed during the Feast days just passed, the clear message God gives to His people is to examine ourselves, repent and “overcome” our sins, pride, elevated views of self, wrong attitudes, and even the attitude that just because we have remained in the faith for decades, that we are now immune to the dangers of Satan’s and the world’s influence. “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall,” God reminds us in 1 Corinthians 10:12.
Christ's messages to the seven churches in Revelation are instructive. Every single one of the warnings applies to any one of us. We often speak of the “Laodicean” attitude where, in concert with favorable world and economic situations, we may feel spiritually “rich and increased with goods” and “have need of nothing.”
But there are warnings to the other churches we need to consider as well. For example, God warns Ephesus to return to their first love. He warns Pergamos and Thyatira of being lured by doctrines from the world and being guilty of sexual immorality. (Of course, God is speaking of spiritual harlotry, which we can be guilty of, as so many of His people down through the ages have been.)
Of note in Revelation 2:20, when speaking to Thyatira, Jesus cautions: “Nevertheless, I have a few things against you, because you [tolerate your wife (those words being the correct translation)] Jezebel…to teach and seduce My servants.”
Passover was supposed to wipe the slate clean for UCG members, but apparently it did not. They are no better than lawless worms wallowing in the pits of sin! Sin must have entered UCG members the second they walked out of the hall on Passover eve.
We might ask ourselves, in an age where lawlessness has invaded our societies, do we “tolerate” sinful actions, attitudes, behaviors and words of those who might have influence over us? Do we excuse those things—perhaps in the name of “love” in the sense that the world’s Christianity uses that word?
Do we excuse and tolerate because it is easier to do that than to heed what the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5? There, he clearly wrote if we truly love (using God’s definition of agape) our brother, we will admonish him and correct him. We should not tolerate continuing, unrepentant sinful actions.
We are the Church of God, and called to live by every word of God. Don’t forget the lessons of the Days of Unleavened Bread. Put the word of God in your minds daily, not the attitudes, tolerance of sin, and the world’s interpretation of why Christ gave His life.
13 comments:
I've spent decades rooting out and sublimating something I had learned from Herbert W. Armstrong. It's something I call "the power of suppository thinking."
Unfortunately, the life mold which that creates is both insidious and long lasting.
BB
Passover was never about wiping the slate clean or a kind of 're-baptisim'. Only in UCG have I encountered this stream of thought.
Has LCG being knocked off the perch of claiming members can never do anything correct?
I thought UCG was the COG that the Ministry could never do anything correct, not the members. Ha!
These people are almost as dopey as the GCI.
BB, would you believe that I actually teach something I learned from HWA to my students?
No, nothing doctrinal whatsoever. It was his recounting of his uncle's advice on ad writing, lol. It adapts very well to writing and producing good video.
That's awesome, RSK! I used to say that the only salvageable nugget was that you should drink 6-8 glasses of water every day. However, I lifted another general thingie, the fact that it isn''t "the thing", but the usage of the thing that makes it good or bad. My application of that principle has been much broader than HWA's, of course. Stuff he proclaimed as bad just because the pagans misused it, I often repurposed.
One hilarious phenomenon happened at Ambassador College in Pasadena. Every year, a couple weeks in, some freshman would go to El Rancho, buy a tube of BrylCreem, and slick his hair straight back, just like HWA, and then run around campus using HWA's favorite terms, like Poppycock and Balderdash!
BB
Can the members do anything right? Not until they figure out there are only 3 feasts-Ex 23:14-16, UB begins the 14th, Lev 23:2 is a mistranslation, there was never a commandment to tithe on money income, third year is not a third tithe.
I heard about one Passover service in UCG this year where the minister (a church veteran) forgot to pray over the bread. An usher told him about it while turning in the tray, and he admitted his error to the congregation.
So yes, we're "always doing something wrong." I'm concluding true repentance (the way the church defines it) is impossible. Only by God's grace will anyone be saved at the end.
The leaders of the UCG talk all they want about the UCG being less authoritarian and having a more "democratic" form of government but they still have doctrinal teachings that are atleast somewhat abusive.
Rebuking your brother often carries big risks. Among other things, this gives away one's mental defences. The sinning brother then works out counter measures. There's a reason that angels use the simple "God rebuke you" when contending with demons.
Most of the ACOGs are bush league compared to WCG. I heard from a friend that LCG's Passover service in Charlotte allowed an unbaptized observer to sit in the room during the service and to sit with a family member during the footwashing. To make matters even stranger, this unbaptized observer was an infant. So LCG is stuck with a dilemma, do they admit that they now allow unbaptized people to observe during the Passover service, or will they get around that by claiming that the infant was a baptized member? Either way, LCG Charlotte is imposing policies on other congregations that it doesn't bother to follow itself.
@2:46:50 PM, one of my family members was there, and reported that this infant was crying and shrieking throughout the Passover service, yet the ministry (including Gerald Weston, who was leading the service) didn't have the disruptive infant removed, despite weeks of prior notice that the Passover service was for baptized members only and that parents were expected to make their own babysitting arrangements. My relative calls it the least reverent Passover in his or her experience since coming into WCG many years ago.
8:32. That sounds more to do with age related mistake rather than apostacy.
That's right. UCG long ago turned the Passover commemoration of Christ's death into a self-flagellating, catholic lent observance that lasts the full 40 days.
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