The Last Great Day: When the message about God's plan for humanity somehow keeps finding its way back into your wallet

The Last Great Day will soon arrive in the improperly named "continuing" Church of God, the way it always does: a sermon about the incorrigibly wicked, and a second sermon about your wallet.

On Crackpot Bob's site today, Ritchie White's Last Great Day offertory is bolted directly onto Bob Thiel's Brisbane sermon, "Three Resurrections: The Third Resurrection." One video tells you who gets the second death. The other tells you where to mail the check. The join is seamless. Judgment for them, PayPal for you.

They open with a confession and then ignore it. "Although the term 'Holy Day Offering' is not in the Bible..." Fine. Honest, even. Then, in the same breath, the Bible is said to command the thing they just admitted it does not name, via Deuteronomy 16:16 and "Exodus 23:4-16."

Deuteronomy 16:16 told Israelite males not to show up at the central sanctuary empty-handed for three pilgrimage feasts. That was land, altar, Levitical priesthood, and agricultural Israel. It was not a standing order to fund a California nonprofit's video channel. And Exodus 23:4 is the law about returning your enemy's stray ox. Verses 14-17 are the feast calendar. Citing "23:4-16" as a holy-day collection text is the sort of precision you get when the real scripture is the donations page.

From there the questions write themselves, and every answer is a mailing address. Who is to contribute? You. Does God bless the giver? He will, if the giver uses the link. Do we reap what we sow? Sow it to Grover Beach. Are we to do good to the poor and the household of faith? After the work is supported. "The work of God is continuing, and God expects His people to support that work with their finances."

Then the menu, printed twice in case reverence made you skim:

• Continuing Church of God, 1036 W. Grand Avenue, Grover Beach, CA 93433
• Continuing Church of God, P.O. Box 109, Grover Beach, CA 93483
• PayPal
• Venmo
• ccog.org/donations

Two street addresses in one post. The little flock is not to fear, but it is expected to know which box the fear-offering goes in. This is not a one-day lapse. The same pipe runs on Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles: act of worship, walk by faith, honor God with your resources, then the Grand Avenue address and the button. The holy day changes. The checkout does not.

Behind the speakers, the banner still says "Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom," with a portrait and a field of sheep. Luke 12:32 was about the kingdom, not a processing fee. In the photo, the hands are already up. In the sermon, the hands are out. The sheep are there for atmosphere. The Venmo link is there for the point.

Then, having passed the plate, the site pivots to eternity. Thiel's hour-and-fourteen-minute sermon asks whether there are three resurrections, whether the third is only for the incorrigibly wicked, and the second death, what happens to people who die after the hundred years of Isaiah 65:20, whether death is sleep, and whether a few Jewish scholars can be stretched into a three-tier chart. "Even most in the COGs do not fully understand the third resurrection." That is the house style. The doctrine is rare, the teacher is rarer, and the rare teacher has a donations tab.

Revelation 20 already has a first resurrection and then the rest of the dead at the great white throne. The "third resurrection" is a Church of God filing system laid over that chapter, with Isaiah 65 pressed into service as an extra waiting room. Early Christians taught resurrection of the body and a judgment. They did not teach seven collection days payable to a Grover Beach mailbox. Turning "not appear empty-handed" into an annual invoice, then parking that invoice beside a lecture on who burns in the second death, is the whole method. 

Fear is for the wicked. The faithful get a QR code.

The Last Great Day is supposed to picture mercy for the bulk of humanity. In this edition, it pictures a man smiling under a "do not fear" banner while the copy underneath explains, twice, how not to appear before the Lord empty-handed. The kingdom, we are told, is the Father's good pleasure to give. The offering, we are told, is the Father's expectation to receive. One of those is in Luke. The other is on PayPal.