Why Does The COG Continue To Try And Sew Up The Torn Temple Veil At Atonement?

 

September 25 is the Day of Atonement in COGland this year. For many members, this day is as sacred as the Passover as it is the second time in the year past sins can be forgiven, though for many this is more a day signaling the coming Feast of Tabernacles than anything else. They eagerly watch the clock dial for the hands to hit sunset so they can pig out and for some, it is the time to start Feast travel (if they have not already started traveling as soon as services are over).

United Church of God has this to say about Atonement:

We have already seen—through the symbolism involved in the Passover—that Christ's shed blood atones for our past sins. In fact, atonement means reconciliation. The Day of Atonement symbolizes the reconciliation of God and all humanity. 

 

If we are reconciled to God through Christ's sacrifice, why do we need another Holy Day to teach us about reconciliation? If we are already reconciled, why do we need to fast, as commanded on the Day of Atonement? (Leviticus 23:27; Acts 27:9). What is this day's specific significance in God's master plan for the salvation of mankind? 

 

The Day of Atonement and Passover both teach us about the forgiveness of sin and our reconciliation with God through Christ's sacrifice. However, Passover concerns the redemption of the firstborn and thus applies most directly to Christians whom God has called in this age, while Atonement carries universalimplications. 

 

Moreover, the Day of Atonement pictures an essential additional step in God's salvation plan not found in the symbolism of the Passover. This step must take place before humanity can experience true peace on earth. Atonement: Removal of Sin's Cause and Reconciliation to God

Basic Christian understanding of the Day of Atonement and its meaning know that it is eclipsed by the New Covenat's understanding of Christ and what his sacrifice accomplished. Hebrew Scriptures foreshadow an anticipated future cleansing of God's people. Sacrifices were offered to atone for past sins committed in the year. It was an ongoing yearly sacrifice that had to be repeatedly done to appease the angry god ticked off at their degenerate sinful behavior and unworthiness. Sadly, most in COGland fail to understand that the New Covenant is far better than any old observance that has to be repeatedly kept.

The New Covenant, discussed in Hebrews stresses the superiority of the death of Christ over all of the old sacrifices done at the temple or tabernacle. The book of Hebrews is the New Covenant counterpart to Leviticus which lists all the things people could not do and have never been able to do.

Under the Old Covenant, God was angry with Israel about sins. Under the New, Covenant you have been saved from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9).

Under the Old Covenant, animal sacrifices were yearly reminders of sins. Under the New Covenant, God remembers your sins no more. (Hebrews 8:12)

Under the Old Covenant, the Holy Spirit could come upon people temporarily for divine acts of service. Under the New Covenant, the Holy Spirit is sealed in you forever (Ephisans 1:13-14).

Under the Old Covenant, David pleaded, "Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11). Under the New Covenant, you rae one in spirit with the Lord (I Corinthians 6:17), He'll never leave you (Hebrews 13:5). The Grace Message, Andrew Farley

Most COG groups never stop and think that the law is merely a shadow of things to come. They think because HWA said to keep it they still must keep it, year after year, always trying to appease their angry god. The New Covenant is not based upon the "blood of goats and calves" but on Christ's blood that brings eternal redemption. Animal sacrifices had to be done year in and year out. For many in COGland, if animal sacrifices were still in effect they would be slaughtering as many animals as they could in a few days. Fortunately, it is not. Basic Christianity has always understood that Christ's sacrifice was "once for all" Hebrews 7:26-27). Because of this, when that veil in the temple was ripped in half, Christians understood that "we have the confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus" and by "a new and living way opened for us through the veil, that's his flesh" (Hebrews 10:19-21). Christians understand that they can now boldly enter into God's presence, that "inner sanctuary behind the veil, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf." (Hebrews 6:19-20).

Jesus is the mediator of that New Covenant, and his new way of grace supersedes the old ways of the law.

“The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 8:7-12) 

Christians no longer need a high priest in some temple or tabernacle, or some evangelist, pastor general, or chief overseer presiding above us inhibiting us from entering the holy of holies. Now, every believer has direct access to God through Christ, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (not just on Passover or Atonement). 

Armstrongist ministers always fail to realize that those high priests entered with fear and trepidation when entering into the holy of holies AFTER they had slaughtered animals, with blood on their hands. When have you ever seen ANY of our church leaders trembling in fear and trepidation on Atonement or any other time of the year? Basic Christianity understands that we may enter God's presence boldly and with confidence not because of anything we can ever do, but by what has already been done FOR us.

The presence of God remained shielded from humanity behind a thick veil during much of Israel’s history. However, Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross changed that. The New Testament tells us that the moment he died, the veil in the Temple was torn in half from top to bottom (Matthew 27:50-51). Only God could have carried out such an incredible feat because the veil was too high for human hands to have reached it, and too thick to have torn it. 

 “the veils before the Most Holy Place were 40 cubits (60 feet) long, and 20 (30 feet) wide, and of the thickness of the palm of the hand”.  Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

Christ is the new high priest. No longer would there be a need for an annual offering for sin on our behalf.  Instead, he has made restitution for us “once and for all” (Heb 10:10). Christ’s fulfillment of the Day of Atonement is why we are forgiven and cleansed from our sins. Sines blotted out never to be remembered again, including the ones from a year ago, ten years ago, or ten years in the future. 

Wiped out. Gone. Never to be remembered./

“gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession.” (Titus 2:14)

“having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him.” (Hebrews 9:28)

He did not enter the holy place with the blood of goats and bulls but with his own blood, we have obtained an eternal redemption once and for all (Hebrews 9:12).

You cannot out sin Jesus. The blood of Jesus never runs out!

There are no more religious hoops to jump through. Instead, you're invited to rest in the one-time sacrifice of Jesus that brought you to God:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. (I Peter 3:18) 

The Church of God's Own August Landmesser

 

This was August Landmesser, a worker at the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. He is the lone man refusing to salute Adolph Hitler understanding how crazy his rhetoric was. Landmesser had run afoul of the Nazi Party over his unlawful relationship with Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman.

Did you know we had our own version of August Landmesser in the Church of God?

Notice the guy in the circle in the background who covers his eyes 

as the rest of the people stand in awe of the Great Herb.

(well, there is also the guy looking like he is ready to vomit...)

 

How the Bible Brought Me to Bacon

By The COG Catholic

Bacon is a special gift from God — one of the tasty ways by which he tells us, “I love you.”

I don't have a Bible verse for that, but I'm convinced.

In my case, bacon has been a healthful “diet food.” With its optimal fat-to-protein ratio, it played a role in my losing 40 pounds in three months. It was part of my dietary strategy — along with intermittent fasting — to reverse my type 2 diabetes. My hemoglobin A1C score plummeted from 8.5 to 5.2.

Of course, I didn't always believe bacon was a health food. I thought it was unfit for human consumption. In fact, I believed eating it was sinful — and not merely because it's “sinfully delicious.”

Bacon Bandits

Growing up in the Armstrongs' Worldwide Church of God, I was deprived of bacon and all other foods considered “unclean” according to the Levitical laws they observed.

But I didn’t feel deprived. I was content. I never coveted the pepperoni or sausage on my classmates’ school cafeteria pizzas, because as pork products they were “unclean” toppings. Why would I want to eat something God forbids?

It’s right there in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. The God who says, “I change not” (Malachi 3:6) clearly delineates between “the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten” (Leviticus 11:46).

By promoting this simplistic understanding, the Armstrongs and their associates acted as “bacon bandits.” In the name of God, they stole from our menu this perfect health food, along with shrimp (the fruit of the sea), crab, catfish, and any other edible flesh proscribed by the Law of Moses.

They taught that these dietary restrictions were health laws. God knows what’s good and what’s not good for us to eat. So, like a Toyota owner's manual, his Book tells us what fuel to use and what not to use for our body’s best performance.

Spriritual explanations

When I was older, however, I began hearing spiritual explanations, which sounded more rational. (I didn't think I knew anyone who chronically battled trichinosis due to rebelliously eating undercooked, parasitic pork flesh.)

It was said that these dietary laws were daily reminders that we are called out of this world, and that choosing to eat “clean” meats and choosing not to eat “unclean” meats served as a living metaphor for how we must choose between good and evil in our everyday life.

Just as we choose God in our thoughts, in our speech, and in what we watch, we also choose God in what we eat.

Then a few years after I began working at the home office of Garner Ted Armstrong’s Church of God International in Tyler, Texas, I was challenged by a couple friends on this issue of clean and unclean meats. One of them offered mostly secular arguments, which I rejected entirely, while the other posed deeper theological arguments.

Back to the Word

That challenge was a call to arms, so to speak. It was time to “sharpen my sword” and yet again “prove” to myself — and to my friends — what I thought I already knew: the Christian mandate to abstain from “unclean meats.”

So I blew a day’s worth of dust off my Bible and again reviewed the relevant passages. (I had not yet taken Catholicism seriously, and instead had a very Protestant “Bible only” mentality.)

This time, as I sought to contradict my friend's point of view, my new study was leading me in an unexpected direction. While I didn’t want to jump to premature conclusions, I felt I might have to revise my understanding.

I had already gotten past the Fundamentalist, bumper-sticker mentality of “The Bible says it — I believe it — that settles it.” Sure enough, the Bible has to be believed, but first it must be correctly understood, which is what I sincerely endeavored to do.

What I found

I don’t want to oversimplify the issue, but for brevity's sake I can say that one passage of Scripture encapsulates the core of what eventually changed my mind (and later practice). It's a passage that perfectly summarizes and explains the purpose of the clean and unclean distinctions with regard to food. And that is Leviticus 20:24-26:

But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You shall thereforeseparate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.

It seemed clear from this verse alone that the primary reason God made these dietary laws was to reflect or illustrate that God had chosen the people of Israel out of all the other nations. It was “therefore” — because of that — that they were to distinguish between the clean and unclean. Just as God set apart Israel from the nations, so he set apart for them unclean animals.

I didn’t want to flip-flop my position based on one verse alone, in case I read too much into it, but this same concept popped up everywhere else, including our go-to chapters of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14:

In Leviticus 11, after its listing of which animals are clean and unclean, we come to verse 45:

For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

In Deuteronomy 14, in the same context as these and other laws of distinction, we encounter verse 2:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Peter's vision

I realized that this explicit Old Testament reason for the dietary laws fits perfectly with the account of Saint Peter’s vision in Acts 10.

Peter didn’t want to eat all the animals, reptiles, and birds he was told to eat, because he knew they were unclean. He objected, saying, “I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean,” but the voice from heaven replied, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” This happened three times in the vision, underscoring its importance.

Now, COG preachers explain (sometimes bombastically) that the meaning of Peter's vision “has nothing to do with food! It has nothing to do with pig, shrimp, lobster — it has nothing to do with dogs and cats, or monkey brains!” (video below). They say his vision only relates to the legitimacy of Gentile believers.

But they don’t grasp the implications of this connection between the Levitical dietary laws and God's covenant people.

The obvious question...and answer

To me, there was no way around the logical question that demanded a logical answer:

If we believe…

• that God gave Israel the dietary laws of clean and unclean as a reminder that God separated them from all the nations to be his people,

• that the Gentiles are “grafted in” to God’s people (Romans 11), and

• that the apostle to the Gentiles wrote, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28),

…then why on earth are we observing a dietary practice that symbolizes something that is no longer the case?

By insisting we abstain from “unclean” meats, we are acting out and illustrating a false reality — one in which the nation of Israel is still being called to be separate and spiritually distinct from the Gentiles.

The fact is that Jesus, for the past 2000 years, has been calling all peoples — Jew and Gentile — to be united in the one universal Church he continues to build.

It therefore makes no sense to continue observing these laws today. The religious symbol no longer matches the reality. As foretold to the patriarchs, the Church does not make a distinction between Jew and Gentile; rather, all are equally “in Christ.”

It's safe to say it was God himself who generously saw fit to add Gentile bacon to the Church's cheeseburger, making it an ever more glorious burger.

Ken's Pizza

It wasn't until I was completely convinced by the Christian understanding of clean and unclean laws that I told my friend one weekend, “Let's go out for a pizza.”

We went to Ken's Pizza on Broadway Avenue in Tyler. I was in my upper 20s, and for the first time ever I enjoyed multiple slices of pepperoni pizza.

Since I was still employed by a church that taught against eating unclean meats, I looked over my shoulder as I ate, but I saw no one I needed to worry about.

There was only one former fellow church employee a few tables over, but she was eating the same things I was.

Conclusion

I realize that in telling how I arrived at this point, I have not addressed the objections often raised by those who abstain from “unclean” animals (e.g., Isaiah's reference to mice, Noah's knowledge of clean and unclean animals, etc.), but that's not the point of this post. It's not a polemic. It's me sharing a slice of my story.

I do find it tragic and even humorous these days looking back on people's reactions when they learned I had left the religion of my youth. It was not uncommon to hear them ask with incredulity, “You mean, you eat pork now?” As if that is the surest sign of going off the rails into apostasy.

It's sobering to consider that there are Bible readers — good people (I was one of them!) — who think that Christianity is centered around worshiping on the correct day of the week, or is based on a particular fanciful prophetic scenario, or is fortified in the Faith by checking the label on a can of beans to make sure it doesn't contain pork — even checking a bag of marshmallows or a box of gelatin to make sure it doesn't contain “animal shortening,” lest it include any pork byproducts (yes, that is a thing).

Obedience to God in all things is necessary, but not misdirected obedience.

When I read the lives and writings of the holy Christian saints of old, their concern was not food and drink — that which comes into the mouth. Their concern was with what comes out of the mouth (cf. Matthew 15:11) — that is, what's in the heart.

Eating animals without cloven hooves or that don't chew the cud isn't what defiles us or makes us unclean. It's our own sinfulness.

In the words of Jesus,

What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man. (Mark 7:20-23)

Our job is to let God graciously cleanse our spiritual wounds (we all have them) and shape us perfectly into his image.

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The COG Catholic currently blogs at https://write.as/thecogcatholic.