Fun Sabbath Facts : An Inconvenient Truth About "Prophesy Comes Alive!"

Prophecy is the life blood of many churches.  Without it and their explanation of how soon, shortly and how far the night  is spent edging us ever closer to the Second Coming etc, they would have little drawing power.  Fear and concern for "what's going to happen to me" is a great motivator towards finding a suitable religion that will cover all contingencies. 

Ever Christian has been told and shown that there are hundreds of prophesies in the Old Testament that point to the first and second coming of Jesus.  This is a core belief and all the proof needed to live lives in anticipation of not having to put up with real living very long.  It won't be long now has been going on a very long time however as we all know, over the past 2000 years.  

As we all know, the New Testament is the sequel to the Old.  But consider this.  How hard would it be to look BACK into the Old Testament, knowing it's "prophesies" on many topics unrelated to Jesus and write a rather mythical account of Jesus life which would match what the OT already said?  That, of course, would look very much like the OT predicted Jesus when in fact the story of Jesus was written by mining the OT for scriptures to write the story.  It would be very easy to do and actually was what was done.  

In Matthew's birth narratives of Jesus , Matthew writes A story of Jesus birth circumstances based solely on Old Testament Scriptures.  Matthew's version of Jesus birth in no way matches Luke's story. It is obvious neither read or heard of the other's story when they were inserted into the Gospel's to quell the problem of "We were not born of fornication" circulating about Jesus real birth circumstances.  Matthew made the OT mean what it never meant to write his story of Jesus. No one knew Jesus  real birth circumstances either in time or place, so he wrote one. In doing so it looks like the Old Testament prophesied everything about Jesus long ahead of time. 

None of the following have anything to do with Jesus nor are they future predictions beyond the lives of those living at the time.  Prophecy is for THEM, not us generally in their lifetime to address their own stresses and fears.  Many OT prophecies failed to come to pass for them as well.  

1. 1:22-23            the birth of Emmanuel  (It means "God IS with us" 
2. 2:5-6                the coming of a shepherd from Bethlehem
3. 2:15                 God’s son being called up out of Egypt
4. 2:17-18            Rachel’s lamentation for her children
5. 2:23                 One who shall be called a Nazorean

For example, #1.    The passage in Isaiah is about a child being born THEN who would be called "God IS with us" meaning the not to worry about the Assyrians wiping them off the map.  Matthew tweeked it by making Emmanuel mean "God with us" which was not the intent of Isaiah's words. Matthew simply used the story to write his own and in doing so makes it look like Jesus was prophesied, and by a virgin at that, again tweeking the text for his own ends. 

Each one of these OT scriptures did not originally mean anything near what Matthew updated them to mean for his story of Jesus.  Originally the out of Egypt story was about Israel, not Jesus but Matthew had the family fleeing to and from Egypt to escape Herod's murderous rampage against the innocents because it made a great story but not necessarily history.  He needed a Herod story to go after Jesus just as Pharoah went after Moses as a baby.  Luke never heard of such a thing and his version of Jesus family has them going back to Nazareth peacefully after 40 days of ritual purification etc.   

Simply put, it is prophecy historized and NOT history prophecied.  Since the early Christians were a spin off of Judaism, what better way to win them over to Jesus than to show their very scriptures predicted him by using them to write the Jesus story.  This technique, not understood by Western Christians and probably disturbing to them if they did is how we get the idea that the Old Testament propehcied everything in Jesus birth and death , down to his final words (Psalm 22)  , earthquakes, darkness and resurrection.  

The fact is that no one knew either the actual birth circumstances of Jesus, not the date nor the place, nor the events surrounding it, nor those of his death.  Try harmonizing the two Gospel accounts of Jesus birth and four of Jesus death and see how far you get.   They are not eyewitness accounts. They are cobbled and woven form Old Testament scriptures that originally did not mean what New Testament authors made them mean.  It was a writing style of the times but not literally true.

Occam's Razor

 "For each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there may be an extremely large, perhaps even incomprehensible, number of possible and more complex alternatives. Since one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more testable."

In other words, the most simple explanation is usually the more correct one

I hope those who find reading longer explanations of interesting topics burdensome will find this to the point.

COG White Bwana's Fighting For African Souls

It is always fun watching Church of Gods battle it out amongst themselves over how many souls they can add to their groups. Today in the Church of God we have two self-appointed leaders who think they are doing the best work that has ever been accomplished in Africa. The battle is going on between Almost-arrested, but not-arrested Bob Thiel and Dingy Wade Cox. Both have the same acronym, CCG.

Thiel claims he is drawing in thousands and thousands of members in Africa to his improperly named "continuing" Church of God, while Wade Cox says he is also bringing thousands in Africa into his improperly named "christian" Churches of God.

Wade CoxJanuary 13 at 6:32pmWell God has been dealing with the churches in Africa this week and we suspect there will be increases following now in Africa. We had church groups leaving the Armstrong offshoots and asking to be inducted to CCG in East Africa and in Benin in West Africa this last week. So also people in Brazil and elsewhere.

The fun thing about all of this is that these Africans they are both so desperate to convert are the same people who have jumped from one COG after another and from one Seventh Day Adventist Church after another. Whoever has the money gets the newest converts. Of course, both of the white Bwana's think they are the new saviours of Africa with their own version of the "truth."

Several years ago Dingy Cox claimed that he had converted 1/2 of the entire African continent into his group. He was widely mocked and proven to be a complete fool. That still has never stopped him as he tries to poach SDA's and other COG groups for followers.

It is also equally sad that there are probably sincere people who are desperately looking to follow Christ, but they will never find him in either of these two silly personality cults.

With any luck, these new converts will bankrupt both of these splinter cults. One can only dream.

I Have To Admit Self-Appointed COG Prophet Is Now A Legitimate Church Prophet

There is one true qualifier of a legitimate Church of God prophet and that it is breaking up families.   This has been especially true of all of the latest COG prophets/apostles/church leaders. All latter-day COG prophets have this one thing in common.

Almost-arrested, but not arrested, Elijah, Amos, Habbakuk Thiel is now in that same category.  He is breaking up families in Africa now.

With the 2 hours of our meeting in Mulozowa’s home, I touched Many subjects and true repentance. One of the attendees decided the next Day not to go for her baptism. Plus another girl was still young but she wanted to be baptized. I did counseling to  her and she noticed the real meaning of baptism and its importance. Since she was still school girl, she decided to wait and not to be baptized at this moment. This girl is a wonderful girl. Her parents did not want her to keep sabbath while the whole family are keeping Sunday. So they chased her out of their home if she has decided to join Continuing Church of God. But the girl accepted our teachings and moved out of their home simply because she wanted to follow the truth. So this girl is now in Mulozowa’s home. I am still thinking how we can assist this girl and if there is a way how we can assist her to continue with her school will be great.

Gerald Weston Prefers Talking About Way of Cain Instead Of Jesus

Once a Christian has stepped away from the church and its tiresome focus upon on the law, doom, destruction, and death and moved into understanding grace, justification, mercy and rest, it is startling at how depressing Armstrongism truly is.  The hope they claim to be looking to is a kingdom beyond their reach because no one is every capable of attaining the high standards they assume are expected of them.

Gerald Weston has written another missive to his followers about The Way of Cain.  One would think that this soon after the Feast of Tabernacles that he would be focusing on the millennial bliss they claim to aspire to be a part of. While it is a millennium of peace they see in front of them, they rarely see Jesus as part of the picture, except for him coming beforehand to kill and slaughter as many people as he can so that the streets of the world flow with blood of the unrighteous, and then he will usher in the kingdom and give all loyal Living Church of God members crowns and place them over cities and worlds to rule with rods of iron to enforce the law.  Jesus be damned, the law is still more important than grace mercy and justice.

Weston writes:

Observing one’s first Feast of Tabernacles is a memorable experience for those of us who did not grow up keeping it. I have more memories of my first Feast than I should take the space to relate in this Editorial, but I want to share one with you. It involves a sermon by a senior minister, an evangelist in the Church of God at that time. I do not remember whether he had a title for the sermon, and if he did, I cannot remember what it was, as that was more than half a century ago. But if I were to put a title on it, it would be, “The Way of Cain.”

There was quite a buzz among the members following that sermon, but I found it a bit intellectual and obscure, a little over my head. I had only attended one weekly Sabbath service and the Day of Atonement prior to leaving for the Feast. The truth is that I understand it better today from the strands I remember than the day I heard it. The primary verse he used relating to Cain was Jude 11: “Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.” So what is that “way of Cain” that he expounded upon?

Cain is best known as the first murderer, the one who killed his brother, but what else do people know about him? And what do they know about his “way”? Few, even in the Church, had ever thought about this, and that is why the sermon had such an impact. It gave new knowledge. It was a revelation to most everyone. 

How much Josephus can be relied upon regarding Cain, or any other subject, is certainly a question. The remainder of the Bible does not indicate any sin in ploughing the ground (1 Kings 19:19; Luke 9:62; 17:7). However, most agriculture today in the advanced nations involves “forcing the ground” through chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and other means. It is difficult to know exactly how Cain was forcing the ground at that time, if indeed he was, and this was the part of the sermon that I found difficult to understand. Nevertheless, it is evident that Cain based his life on the get principle, and Josephus is no doubt correct when he says Cain “was wholly intent upon getting….” 

The Church of God and the Waldenses

I was asked to repost this article from August 24, 2011 as various COG's, including Bob Thiel, are making claims that the Waldenses were Church of God stock.


Douglas mentioned the other day in one of his comments that Larry Grieder, a minister in the new splinter COG cult - Church of God, A Worldwide Association, has recently been promoting the lie that the Waldenses were Sabbath keepers..

Armstrongism, like Adventism look at one phrase associated with the Waldenses and promptly think it means they were Sabbatarians:  "insabbati"  One little word is what SDA's and Armstrongism base their bold claims upon.  The real definition is towards the end of this post below and it is NOT what you think.

This myth has been floating around the COG for decades.  The main culprit in promoting this lie was Dean Blackwell and Herman Hoeh.

Any quick check through the Internet can list a myriad of articles all stating that the Waldenses were NOT sabbatarians.  The Waldenses started as a reform movement in the Catholic Church and later got wrapped up in Calvinism.  There are Waldenses here in the United States who will also tell you that they are NOT sabbatarians.  The Waldenses here eventually joined up with the US Presbyterian Church.

Armstrongism bought into this myth because of our close ties to Adventism.  Elllen G White was the first to broach the Waldenses topic and their supposed sabbatarianism.    Because she was a "prophet," many took her rantings as "gospel truth" much like the people in Armstrongism did when HWA, Meredith or others proclaimed some new truth.

Ellen G. White, founder of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination in the 19th century, in a more fanciful account, claims to have found early seventh-day "Sabbath keepers" in the Waldenses :

"In lands beyond the jurisdiction of Rome there existed for many centuries bodies of Christians who remained almost wholly free from papal corruption. They were surrounded by heathenism and in the lapse of ages were affected by its errors; but they continued to regard the Bible as the only rule of faith and adhered to many of its truths. These Christians believed in the perpetuity of the law of God and observed the sabbath of the fourth commandment....But of those who resisted the encroachments of the papal power, the Waldenses stood foremost....The faith which for centuries was held and taught by the Waldensian Christians was in marked contrast to the false doctrines put forth from Rome....Through ages of darkness and apostasy there were Waldenses who denied the supremacy of Rome, who rejected image worship as idolatry, and who kept the true Sabbath...Here, for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient faith." (The Great Controversy, chapter on "The Waldenses", emphasis mine)

There is also a letter from the Waldenses Church in Italy who refute the claim by SDA's that they were sabbath keepers:

Therefore, the Waldensians did not keep the Sabbath (in the sense of Saturday instead of Sunday) and were not guardians of the "Sabbath Truth” as somebody calls it. The Waldensians never followed the Seventh-day Adventist’s Sabbath but they followed more Paul in Romans 14,5-8.

We can therefore say very clearly that the Waldensians were not Seventh-day Sabbath keepers and they were not persecuted for keeping Saturday as the Sabbath! Thy were persecuted, [from 1532 (when they joined the Reformation - Angrogna Synod) to 1848 (when they received religious freedom)], because of their Reformed-Calvinistic faith in Christ.

Even Samuel Bacchiocchi, the SDA "scholar" and Armstrongism's favorite "go to person" for Sabbatarian info, was not able to find anything.

Dr. Bacchiocchi has probably done more research on the Sabbath than any living human. Did he find evidence that some of the Waldenses observed the Sabbath?

"I spent several hours searching for an answer in the two scholarly volumes Storia dei Valdesi--(History of the Waldenses), authored by Amedeo Molnar and Augusto Hugon. These two books were published in 1974 by the Claudiana, which is the official Italian Waldensian publishing house. They are regarded as the most comprehensive history of the Waldenses. To my regret I found no allusion whatsoever to Sabbathkeeping among the Waldenses."

Dr. Bacchiocchi is not the first Adventist to search in vain for evidence of the Waldenses keeping the Sabbath. The only thing researchers have found thus far are some documents which refer to the Waldenses by their nickname, "insabbati." Unfortunately for Mrs. White, the term has nothing to do with the Sabbath. It refers to the sandals the Waldenses were known to wear. The Latin word for sandals is sabbatum. Thus, the Waldenses were insabbati--"sandal wearers."

Jared Oler (former COG member) writes this:

But the Seventh-Day Adventists were not alone in claiming the Waldenses as spiritual and historical antecedents. That same view of the Waldenses is widespread in the publications of the Sabbatarian movement. Here is the way the WCG characterised the Waldenses in their Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course, Lesson 51, published in 1968:

``The Waldenses recognized that they were the true successors of the apostolic church. They kept the Sabbath, also the yearly Passover. And each September or October (in God's seventh month-see Lev. 23), they held at the headquarters church a great `conference.' As many as 700 persons attended from afar. New students were chosen, ministerial assignments were made, and crowds gathered daily to listen to sermons. What could this gathering have been but the Feast of Tabernacles! . . . But in 1194, Alphonse, king of Aragon, Barcelona and Provence decreed these `Waldenses, Zapatati or Inzabbati [keepers of God's Sabbath] who otherwise are called the Poor Men of Lyons' worthy of any punishment short of death or mutilation.'' (ACBCC p.11)

In this account, the Waldenses were presented not only as Seventh-Day Sabbatarians, but as observers of the seven annual holy days of the Hebrew calendar-not coincidentally, just like the pre-1995 WCG. It is also probably not a coincidence that this account describes the life and activities of Peter Waldo, founder of the Waldenses, in terms remarkably similar to the way the WCG was formerly wont to describe itself and its founder, former businessman Herbert W. Armstrong:

``Then Christ acted. The man He chose to become His apostle was a wealthy merchant in Lyons, . . . Christ saw by his actions that Waldo was in earnest. His mind began to be opened to the truth that had formerly meant nothing to him . . . Waldo brought the same practical common sense that had made him successful as a businessman to the organization and Work of the Church. He had the education and experience which so few in God's Church had (I Cor. 1:26). Jesus Christ probably guided that experience, unknown to Waldo, long before his conversion. As he preached, others united themselves and their efforts to his. They became, as it is said, `as many co-workers for him.' They dedicated their lives and their property to the spread of Christ's gospel. This little group became known as the `Poor Men of Lyons.' But that was not the name of the Church. They called themselves the Church of God, or simply Christians.'' (ACBCC p.6)

Jared writes further on:

Furthermore, although the WCG once tried to identify the Waldenses as observers of the annual holy days of Leviticus 23, there is even less reason to link them to such customs than there is to link them to Seventh-Day Sabbatarianism. True to their Catholic origins, the Waldenses celebrated Easter or Pascha-``Passover''-but they were not in any way Quartodecimans. Their Paschal festival was not timed to start on the 14th day of the first month of the Hebrew sacred calendar, but instead simply followed the Catholic Church's calculation. As for the annual Waldensian conference in September and October, far from an attempt to celebrate the autumnal Feast of Tabernacles, its timing resulted from the fact that certain Catholic feasts and saints' days especially loved by the Waldenses happened to fall in the autumn.

Armstrongism, like the Adventist's use this claim to establish their legitimacy in their so-called "right of succession" for maintaining the "truth once delivered." Both are made illegitimate with their claims:

Apparently Mrs. White wanted to have a line of unbroken Sabbath-keeping, from the time of the Apostles, to the Waldenses in the mountains of Europe, all the way through to the time of the Seventh-day Adventists. Unfortunately, such a continuum does not exist. Sunday-keeping began much earlier than Mrs. White realized, and the Waldenses never kept the Sabbath at all.

Another inaccurate statement Mrs. White made about the Waldenses is:

"Behind the lofty bulwarks of the mountains . .. the Waldenses found a hiding place. Here the light of truth was kept burning amid the darkness of the Middle Ages. Here for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient faith." (pp. 65-66)

The Waldensian movement was established by Peter Valdes around 1176. The Waldenses were not excommunicated from the church until 1184. Therefore, the move to the mountains could not have taken place until after 1184, and the persecution of the Waldenses had subsided by the late 1600s. Therefore, it would be impossible for the Waldenses to have kept the light of truth burning for "a thousand years" during the Middle Ages. 500 years is a more likely number.

For more information:

 Who Were the Waldenses? Early Evangelicals?

Letter From Waldenses Church stating that they are NOT Sabbath Keepers

Great Controversy Errors Exposed

The Early Waldenses

Adventist Media Response and Conversation: Waldenses and the Seventh day Sabbath and Adventists