Restored Church of God Exit Letter by Steve Bell From England

 

The following Restored Church of God Exit Letter by Steve Bell in England was given to exrcg.org with permission to share publicly.

 

 

January 14, 2024

 

My Dearest Brethren,

 

Greetings from the Northwest. I hope this email finds you all doing well and keeping warm.

Thankfully, spring will be here before we know it, which means warmer weather.

For 14 years, my family and I have been blessed with the ability to have broken bread and have fellowship with you. We thoroughly enjoyed all the time that God has allowed us to share together on the various Holy Days, and we long for that fellowship daily.

I know I don't write to you very often and haven't emailed you all in a long time. I suppose life gets in the way. Being in my mid-forties with a little one who keeps my wife and me on our toes and exhausted at the end of each day, a lot of time passes without noticing it. It seems like only yesterday that we were at our first Feast of Tabernacles, where we met most of you for the first time. It’s funny how time passes so quickly the older one gets.

I write to you from a place of genuine love and concern because we all are being deceived, and for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, I'm certain that most, if not all, of you have at least thought about this yourselves. We have been listening to a great heresy for many years. We have been hearing incredibly confusing messages, and yet Scripture tells us that “God is not the author of confusion but of peace and a sound mind.”

We have been given failed prophecy time and time again by Mr. David C. Pack. From March 2022 to today, we have been given 78 false dates for the return of Christ/God's Kingdom, and each one of those dates has come and gone without consequence.

I don't know how many more dates were given before then, but I know there were many.

Deuteronomy 18:21-22

And if you say in your heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously: you shall not be afraid of him.

The word “afraid” in the Hebrew means “to sojourn or abide with.”

2 Peter 1:20

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.

“Private interpretation” in the Greek means “one's own solution or explanation.” And yet, the men at Headquarters sit behind closed doors and privately interpret them, and they fail. God's prophecies NEVER fail.

Another recent heretical teaching is that Christ will take the Passover on the 15th of Abib when Scripture clearly states time and again that the Passover is the 14th of Abib. Ask yourselves, would our Saviour “unlawfully” take the Passover a day late?

Also, we have learned that Christ isn’t the Branch, although YOU KNOW HE IS!!! This is absolute wickedness and heresy. Scripture is being perverted to mean what it doesn’t mean!

God admonishes us to trust NO MAN, put your trust not in mortals, TRUST GOD!!!!

Also, consider the new “new moon” doctrine, which is absolutely unscriptural. The ONLY new moon that is to be observed is The Feast of Trumpets.

Isaiah 1:14

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

Scripture also tells us:

1 Thessalonians 5:21

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

Yet, I remember four or five years ago, a letter was sent to Headquarters regarding the prophecy series from a brethren stating this verse to which this response was given:

“You’ve already proven all things, you’re in the Church, that’s all you need to prove.”

The word ALL in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 is “pas” in the Greek. It means literally “everything, the whole, every kind of, all things.”

REMEMBER YOUR FIRST LOVE

We have all been betrayed and lied to. You should not abide with that false prophet any longer.

It is with a heavy heart that I inform you that my family and I are leaving the organization of The Restored Church of God. I know that you will be told we have left “the Church” or “the Truth.” We are not leaving the Church or the Truth. We are leaving an organization where lies and wickedness abound.

Brethren, we genuinely love and care for you all. We hope and pray that at least some of you will not cut us out of your lives. You are our family and friends, and we are thankful for that. Never in my life have I known such genuine and kind people.

May God continue to guide and bless you all for all your days. I look forward to the day when we all see each other again.

All Our Love,

Steve Bell & Family

 

Courtesy of marc Cebrian

See: RCG Exit Letter: Steve Bell

Dave Pack: Inarguable, Impossible, Immutable...

 

LCG: The Old Covenant Is NOT Obsolete!

Doug writes:

Is the Old Testament Obsolete? Jesus said that Christians are to live “by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). The Apostle Paul wrote, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). When these words were spoken and written, the primary Scriptures in existence were the books of the Old Testament. Today, many have been told that the Old Testament has been superseded by the New Covenant and the New Testament. Yet, when Paul cited Old Testament passages to Christians in Corinth, he said, “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:1–11). When Jesus and the Apostles quoted Scripture, they quoted from the Old Testament. King David wrote in Psalm 119:160 “The entirety of Your word is truth.” The Old Testament is not obsolete. The truth of God contained in the Scriptures will eventually fill the earth (Isaiah 11:9)—which is why we study the whole Bible today.
Have a profitable Sabbath,
Douglas S. Winnail

One needs to remember that the words "Old Testament" and "'New Testament" were added by Bible publishers and were never any part of the canon. If you really want to be accurate then it should be Old Covenant and New Covenant.

The old covenant is a covenant made with the children of Israel as a people and a nation. It involved no one else - other than those who wished to be part of the system who then had to take on that identity through circumcision and other rules. It never involved anyone else outside Israel nor anyone hundreds or thousands of years later. That covenant is found in Exodus 19-22. Those writings are still intact and never passed away. They are still there, but the covenant is a totally different story.

The Old Covenant was contingent upon the people's obedience to the Law of Moses, not for salvation, but upon blessings and cursing depending upon performance.

Prior to the delivery of the law to Moses, God made a covenant with Abraham:

Galatians 3:16-18  NRSVUE

16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring;[a] it does not say, “And to offsprings,”[b] as of many, but it says, “And to your offspring,”[c] that is, to one person, who is Christ. 17 My point is this: the law, which came four hundred thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18 For if the inheritance comes from the law, it no longer comes from the promise, but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.

God never changed his mind about his promises to Abraham but made a new covenant which was needed, and which was the plan all along. The law was added because people no longer trusted in God. Their transgressions needed to be pointed out to them through blessings and cursings.

And yet, old covenant writings, as a freshman in seminary learns, portray a shadow of something to come. Something bigger and better. That old covenant was completed and replaced by something NEW. What had lost its glory took on a new glory.

2 Corinthians 3:10-15. NRSVUE

10 Indeed, what once had glory has in this respect lost its glory because of the greater glory, 

 

11 for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory! 

 

12 Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with complete frankness, 13 not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that[a] was being set aside. 14 But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside. 15 Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,[b]

Hebrews 8:7-9. NRSVUE

7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second one. 

 

8 God[a] finds fault with them when he says:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 

9 not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt,for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I had no concern for them, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 31:31-32. NRSVUE
A New Covenant

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 

 

Hebrews 10:9-10 NRSVUE

9 then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. 10 And it is by God’s will[a] that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Galatians 4:30. NRSVUE

30 But what does the scripture say? “Drive out the enslaved woman and her child, for the child of the enslaved woman will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman.”

2 Corinthians 3. NRSVUE
Ministers of the New Covenant

3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, 3 and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.[a] 

 

4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God, 6 who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 

 

7 Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets,[b] came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’s face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation,[c]much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! 10 Indeed, what once had glory has in this respect lost its glory because of the greater glory, 11 for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory! 

 

12 Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with complete frankness, 13 not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that[d] was being set aside. 14 But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside. 15 Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,[e] 16 but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

It is amazing to watch as LCG still tries to cling to something that is no longer in effect. The thing whose glory was long ago tarnished. The thing that killed and could never give life. The thing that was old, worn out, and obsolete.

No scripture can be more effective in stating that than this:

Hebrews 8:13 NRSVUE

13 In speaking of a new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete, and what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.

Stating it is obsolete does not mean what is written there, its historical narrative, and its wisdom are no longer useful, but that it points to something bigger and better to come, who Jesus is and God's story with us. Again, basic Christian understanding.

The Old Covenant made exclusively with Israel was laid to rest and made obsolete with the crucifixion and resurrection.

Hebrews 8:10-13. NRSVUE

10 This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: 

 

I will put my laws in their minds

and write them on their hearts,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people.

11 And they shall not teach one another

or say to each other,[a] ‘Know the Lord,’

for they shall all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest.

12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,

and I will remember their sins[b] no more.” 

 

13 In speaking of a new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete, and what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.

What Doug and most in LCG fail to understand is that the covenant was made obsolete, not a collection of books. The writings prior to Jesus are NOT the Old Testament. Even Jesus referred to these writings of the prophets and the law.

The law of Moses was part of the Old Covenant and we today are not part of that covenant. We have been invited into a New Covenant. Something bigger, better, and more glorious where condemnation and cursings no longer have power. It is time to break those shackles and be free.