Vol. 4, No. 4 A newsletter for servants of the Almighty Eternal Creator, wherever they may be June 1998

Battle of the MindSolomon said in the Proverbs, “Train up a child in the way

that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart fromit.” Wise words indeed.

The importance of rearingup a child properly, particu-larly starting at a veryyoung age, is wellunderstood in all cir-cles. In fact there aremajor programswhere famous intel-lects and theEinsteins of today aredonating sperm to begiven to certain parentsto raise more geniuses,rearing them from the womb.

Naturally, when a person readsthese words of Solomon, they almost automatically begin tothink of little children, chronologically. But let’s take thissame verse and go a little bit further into its spiritual meaningto understand the duality of its intent for adults.

To begin, let’s go to the gospels: “Jesus speaking to the lit-tle children...” and “Come as little children...” Now everyoneknows you can’t go back in time to become a physical childagain, so Christ was referring to the child within all of us.That child is our mind, our attitude—babes in Christ; Cometo maturity; On the milk, etc.

When putting Solomon’s words with the words of Christ,we begin to get the picture of the newborn babe in Christ—that spiritual realm we entered at baptism—a full grownadult, chronologically, who begins his spiritual development

from a small infant seed in much thesame way as a young baby begins hisdevelopment. Just as a mother nurturesher young, so does the Holy Spirit,through Christ, nurture the youngChristian. However, for the believer thisdevelopment begins long before bap-tism.

The mind is a powerful element, it isthe guiding force behind everything wethink, do and say, and just like a child,if left unattended it can run wild. Itneeds to be worked with because, bynature, it is basically lazy and unless

Names, Numbersand Nonsense

Throughout the Bible, we find names of men with sig-nificant meanings—both good and bad. “Jacob” means“supplanter”, a fitting name for a man who stole his broth-er’s birthright. Later, he was given the name “Israel” whichmeans “God prevails” or “prevailer with God”. “David”, aman after the Eternal’s own heart (Acts 13:22) means“beloved”. On the other hand, the man who refused to feedDavid and his men when they were hungry was named“Nabal” which means “fool”.

Cities and other places mentioned in the Bible some-times have names that nicely fit with their part in a particu-lar Bible story. “Jerusalem” means “teaching of peace”. Thename Jordan means “descender”, which is fitting for the

people descending into its waters tobe baptized, and the Spirit

descending upon our Savior(Matt 3:1-16).

Throughout theBible we also findmany events fallinginto numerical pat-terns. There are 7days in a week, 7years in the harvest

cycle, 49 (7×7) years tothe Jubilee cycle, and 70

(7×10) men who wereappointed elders over Israel.

There were originally 12 tribes ofIsrael, 12 apostles, and 24 (12×2) elders in heaven.

Many thick books have been writ-ten on these subjects. The Creator iscertainly a God of order, One who paysattention to meanings of names andnumbers. But does He tell us that wecan find Him and His servants by look-ing for amazing names and numbers?No! He tells us that His messengerswill agree with His word (Is 8:20), thatthey will not have “mistaken prophe-cies” (Deut 18:22), and that they willbe noted by the love they have for oth-ers (John 13:35). The BabylonianMystery religion, Gnosticism and their

2 Truckers’ Bible Study, Part 3

3 News from Local Congregations

5 New Feast Sites, Complete List

7 Religious and World News

9 Security and Identity

11 Want to Start Spreading Sunshine?

12 Godly Unity vs Worldly Unity

13 More Doublespeak from UCGIA

16 UCGIA Ministry Letter

18 Letters and Responses

Also In This Issue:

Continued on page 28Continued on page 26

Trucker’sBible StudyOak Grove, Mo., Part 3

The Truckers’ Bible Study is conducted weekly at the Texaco truck stop onI-70 in Oak Grove, Missouri. Arlo Gieselman, a member of the Church of God7th day started the study. He is often assisted by Lenny Cacchio.

Norman Edwards attended the study onJune 7, 1998.Because the signhad not yet been replaced, no truckers attended. However, one employee ofthe truck stop attended and sought help with a difficult personal situation. Itwas interesting to see that this individual already had some understanding ofthe scriptures regarding the problem at hand. Yet, this person attended nochurch group regularly. Arlo, Lenny, and Norman were able to add otherscriptures, as well as give some insight and Scriptural counsel on the matter.

The entire two-hour study time was used in this process. Was this study afailure because no truckers came? If we really believe that our Father inheaven is running His work, we need to realize that He may have decided itwas most important for one person to be counseled that day. Another day, itmay be something completely different. We have to walk forward and let theEternal direct our steps. —Norman Edwards

At the June 21 study, we had two truckers and we were also joined by Billand Scarlet Stough, who are frequent contributors to The Journal, News of theChurches of God.

I believe that the Stoughs might write a feature article on our modestendeavor for that newspaper.

There is now a permanent sign up, which should help attendance. The twogentlemen both asked for tapes and literature, which I was glad to provide.They each took a fistful of stuff with them. We were also able to provide themwith Bibles. One of the men says he likes to make copies of the tapes and givethem away,

We began with the Bereans, and how they didn't just accept what Paulsaid, but searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so. The tapesand literature I gave out—and what we discuss in the Bible Study—should becompared to the scriptures, and what they teach should be accepted only if thethey agree with the scriptures. Also, which denominations we belong to willnot be mentioned in the Bible Study unless it is just mentioned in passing.

I turned to Genesis 1 and 2 and read that God made man in His image, thatwe were made to rule and to have dominion over God's creation. We alsoreferred to the purpose of man in Hebrews 1 and 2.

Some of the other subjects discussed were:1) God does not force man to obey him. Man has free moral agency.2) God allows the wheat and the tares to grow together. We in our human

wisdom often can't tell the difference, but it is God who will sort it out.3) God requires sacrifice from us. Will we follow His call?4) We should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. 5) What if the entire world kept just any one of the Ten Commandments?

How would the world be different? 6) There is more than just grace to salvation; God does require some

things of us (Matthew 25 and James' epistle).7) What is sin?Today was most rewarding, as we were able to walk alongside these men,

give them literature and Bibles, give them some things to think about, and yetbe non-confrontational about it.

Once again, it is encouraging to see both the depth of Bible understandingthat some folks have, and their eagerness to learn more.

— Lenny CacchioPage 2 June 1998

Vol. 4, No. 4 June 1998

Servants� News is a ministry to help others under-stand the Creator�s will, obey Him, and teach others. Webelieve that the Bible contains the foundation of knowl-edge about our Creator and that He is actively workingthrough people today. Our focus is to help the Sabbath-keeping brethren who believe Yeshua (Jesus) is theMessiah, but we realize that the Eternal works with manygroups and individuals.

We believe the gospel should be given freely�youmay copy this newsletter and give it to others. Servants��News has nothing to sell and has no financial ties withother organizations, but is supported by those who per-sonally decide to help this ministry. We do not have IRStax exempt status, but the IRS accepts some charitabledeductions without such status (see IRS Publication557, p. 16, col. 1).

Editor & Publisher: Norman S. EdwardsAssociate Editors: Tim & Jeanice Davis, Marleen

Edwards, Missi Lara, Lee Lisman, Jon D. Pike,Ann Wibbelsmann

Technical Services: George DeweyOffice Administrator: Pam DeweyContributors: Many! Thanks to everyone!

NOTICE: The people listed above do not necessarilyendorse every article in this newsletter.

Servants� News accepts articles for publication.Include a self-addressed stamped envelope for items thatyou want returned. We are happy to print corrections forany significant errors. Address articles, letters and sub-scription or literature requests to:

Servants’ NewsPO Box 220

Charlotte, Michigan 48813-0220Phone:517-543-5544Fax: 517-543-8899

E-Mail: 75260.1603@CompuServe.comInternet: http://www.best.com/~oasis7/sn/

Subscription and literature requests may be sent tothe following addresses. Contributions received at theselocations will be used for duplicating and mailing. Pleasemake checks out to the name shown with the address:Australia: Dale Heslin, 9 Alice Jackson

Crescent, Gilmore, ACT 2905Canada: Cherie Zimmerman, 268 Pennswood

Way SE, Calgary, AB T2A 4T3Europe: Servants’ News, Gulpen 122,

4852 Hombourg, BelgiumU.K.: Jenny Whiteman, 2 Warren Rd,

Narborough, Leicester, LE9 5DRMost scripture quotations are from the NewKing James Version unless otherwise noted.

Circulation: 2300Servants� News is published monthly except for com-bined January/February, March/April andSeptember/October issues. Subscriptions are free topeople who request the publication and are genuinelyinterested in it. Servants� News is published by NormanS. Edwards, 202 Pearl St, Charlotte, Michigan 48813.He reserves the right to refuse subscriptions for any rea-son. Periodical postage pending at Charlotte, Michigan.Postmaster: send address changes to Servants� News,PO Box 220, Charlotte, Michigan 48813-0220.

Page 3

Exchange Old WCG Literature:If you are looking to obtain, give

away, or trade old WCG literature, thisInternet site is worth checking out:www.absin.com/public/WcgSwapPage.html

IBLC Info for More People:We have a few of the items from

IBLC and have appreciated the materi-al. However, the high cost prevents usfrom obtaining all the course materialthey have. Others may have this prob-lem as well. Therefore, we would liketo begin a loan program of the IBLCaudio/video courses through The BibleSabbath Assn. For a nominal fee tocover postage and shipping, we plan toloan IBLC material for 14-day loans.

If you have IBLC courses, wouldyou consider donating them to TheBible Sabbath Association, for the pur-pose of loaning them to others? Wewould appreciate your help.

—Richard Nickels FamilyGiving & Sharing, Bible Sabbath Assn3316 Alberta Drive, Gillette, WY 82718

(307) 686-5191; giveshare@vcn.comhttp://www.vcn.com/~giveshare

Summer Conference ScheduleEveryone is invited to attend a con-

ference entitled In Jars of Clay—Uncovering Our True Identity inMessiah. This may be interesting tothose who would like to learn about theMessianic Jewish perspective.

Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota:August 14-16, 1998

Dallas, Texas: August 21-23, 1998Purpose: 1) To be affirmed as New

Creations in the Messiah! 2) To appre-ciate the Torah (first five books of theBible) as foundational for our identity!3) To learn how the Torah and NewCovenant work together to establishour identity! 4) To discuss some tradi-tional misconceptions of the Torah!

Speakers: Ariel & D’vorahBerkowitz, authors of Torah

Rediscovered, Take Hold, and exten-sive commentaries on the Torah. Arielis also the co-leader of a Torah basedcongregation in Jerusalem. BoazMichael, Founder and Director of FirstFruits of Zion ministries.

Sponsor: First Fruits of Zion, POBox 620099, Littleton, CO 80162-0099, Phone (800)775-4807 or 303-933-2119, Fax: 303-933-0997, E-Mail:ffoz-israel@ffoz.org, on-line reg-istration at: http://www.ffoz.org.

Kansas City Fellowship PicnicA Fellowship Picnic for all former

& current members of any COG in theKansas City area will be held Sunday,September 13 at Shelter #3 atLongview Lake. E-mail the organizer,Diane Cacchio at lcacchio@unicom.netor call 816-524-2442.

—Paula Frazee

Preparing the Bride of MessiahDate: August 29, 1998, 9:00 AM to

2:30 PM.Location: New Life Center, 6830

Highland Dr., Everett, Washington.Speakers: Dean Wheelock (Hebrew

RootsEditor) and Lee Lisman.Sponsor: Church of God, Everett.For more information, contact, Dan

and Mary Ellen Stevens, (360) 653-6084.

Sherrod Lectures Great Success!The saying goes that “you cannot

get blood out of a stone” when used inthe context that it is nigh impossible toundertake or accomplish something.

Well, the Rick Sherrod lectureseries in Australia proved otherwise!(For details see Servants’ NewsSept/Oct 1997 p. 29 and May 1998,p.3) It was run on a shoestring budgetand the lecture series was more suc-cessful than what anyone expected,including Rick and myself. Leading upto the lectures, the signals were clear to

me that they would be successful, but itwas not apparent that they would be assuccessful as they were.

The lecture series, organised chieflyby non-ordained members of the UCGwith help from many others, had thefollowing objectives

a) to use these lecture series as ameans of outreach: This proved verysuccessful with about two-thirds ofattendees not having any back-ground in the various Churches ofGod. He was also interviewed for anarticle in the Coffs Harbour Advocateand by the Rev Dr Gordon Moyes, whohosts Australia's most popular religiousradio program, "Sunday Night Live" on2GB.

b) to revitalise interest in this keydoctrine after 12 years of neglect(Fundamentals of Belief no. 15): mem-bers of the various Churches of Godappeared to be well pleased with thisseries. Many found the lectures fasci-nating, bringing further proof for ourIsrael identity in addition to the tradi-tional proofs.

c) To build bridges with other sim-ilar Churches of God: members of theGlobal Church of God, Church of God,International, The Church of God,Independent Church of God,Intercontinental Church of God andnon-aligned sabbatarians attended andfelt very relaxed with each other. TheGlobal Church of God announced thelectures as did certain WorldwideChurch of God pastors.

In fact, the following organisa-tions/periodicals permitted us to placeflyers advertising the lectures in theirmailouts: British-Israel WorldFederation, Christian EducationalServices, Servants’ News magazine,Faith in Australia magazine, TheJournal newspaper, The IndependentChurch of God, Perspectivesmagazine,Alert newsletter, Sabbath Historynewsletter, The Shofar newsletter,Origins of Nationsmagazine/HistoryResearch Projects.This should be seenin the context of Matt 12:30 and Mark

June 1998

NNeewwss ffrroomm

LocalCongregations

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SERVANTS� NEWS

9:38-40; Num 11:27-29.Dr Sherrod stated, before leaving

for the United States, that “Australiawas an utter delight in terms of servicethat I have been able to contribute to theChurch. This is one of the highlights ofmy career in the ministry. I am pleasedthat the turnout was as large as it was—I did not anticipate as many outside ofthe Churches of God.”

In the United States, at least 90% ofthe audience was UCG and most or allof the rest were from other Churches ofGod.

Approximate attendance was:Sydney: Sabbath services: 80;

Saturday afternoon: 185; Sunday morn-ing 80; Sunday afternoon: 90.Canberra: 56. Coffs Harbour: 40.Brisbane: Sabbath services: 76;Saturday afternoon: 186. Toowoomba:50. Melbourne: first night: 120; sec-ond night: 86. Approximate numberof individuals attending: 600.

In retrospect, a few things would bedone differently, including pushingharder for follow-up Bible lectures on arange of topics to ensure that the non-Church of God visitors learn moreabout our teachings in a methodical andsequential manner.

—Craig Whitecraig@triode.net.au

While Craig may not agree with mycomments, I feel I really need to makethem: Craig and others, were able toaccomplish, independently, what wouldhave been impossible in one of thechurch organizations. Had an organiza-tion attempted to sponsor this conference,nearly all of their members would haveattended, but almost none of the othergroups would. Furthermore, the organi-zations might have decided that they hadto approve all of Dr. Sherrod’s talks tomake sure they had a “uniform appear-ance with church doctrine”—that couldhave taken years. Also, they may haveinsisted that the trip had to be “doneright’ (a big budget), and then decided itwas just too expensive. Finally, if anyonewho attended was interested in learningmore about Church of God doctrines,organizations would only direct them totheir own local congregations—even iftheir nearest congregation was much fur-ther than another groups’ congregations.

Dr Sherrod clearly has a “gift” forteaching history, especially BritishIsraelism. His doctoral degree makes

him recognized by the world as well. Ifwe are to operate as a body of believerswith differing gifts (1Cor 12, Eph 4,etc.), other stable local congregationsmay wish to invite Dr. Sherrod to drawpeople and spark their interest. Then thelocal congregation will have to be readyto teach and shepherd those who mayhave an enduring interest.

—Norman Edwards

WCG Major EventsThe Worldwide Church of God con-

cluded their Regional Pastors meetingin Pasadena this week. A source whowished not to be identified gave ussome major points from the meetings:

The Big Sandy campus is ready togo into escrow to a Catholic school.

The Pasadena property has hadmany interested buyers. At least threeof them are currently trying to outbideach other. The Pasadena property maygo into escrow as soon as 3 months.

The headquarters management doesnot really believe in keeping the Sabbathor Holy Days any more, but are main-taining Sabbath services in most areasbecause a large number of their mem-bers still want to meet on the Sabbath.

This confirms the other reports thatwe have been receiving that theWorldwide Church of God is now los-ing more members to Sunday-keepingcongregations than they are to theWCG split-off groups. Their largestgroup of members appears to be peoplewho believe that they should “stay inthe WCG no matter what”.

Ray Wooten in Goshen, IndianaDate: Saturday, July 4, 1998.Time: 11:00 AM Eastern Standard

Time (same as Central DaylightSavings Time).

Location: Community Building,Green Croft Retirement Center atGoshen College, College Avenue, southside of Goshen, Indiana. From Indiana15, turn east onto College Avenue, crossrailroad tracks, go ½ mile, turn southinto Green Croft Retirement Centerarea. The Community Building will bestraight ahead.

Purpose: Ray Wooten, of UnitedChristian Ministries in Birmingham,Alabama will present “Search theScriptures: John 5:39”. All are invited

for a day of worship, fellowship, andinstruction.

Sponsor: Church of God, Elkhart.Contact: John Davis, 219-267-

7519 after 5:00 PM or e-mail102505.1400@compuserve.com.

European Economic UnionFor years, Church of God groups,

and many other prophetically orientedgroups have looked for a union of tenEuropean nations. How do we knowwhen a union is a union as defined inthe Bible? Must there be a single gov-ernment or binding treaty integrating allaspects of governing? Or is a joint mili-tary agreement enough to be considereda union? In today’s high-tech military,economic power is the single mostimportant factor of a country’s strength.

After months of talking and arguingfine points between France andGermany, European leaders meeting inBrussels, Belgium signed a formal agree-ment for monetary union on Saturday,May 2, 1998. Wim Duisenberg, a dutch-man, was named president of the newEuropean Central Bank.

The countries taking part in the newcurrency are Austria, Belgium,Finland, France, Germany, Ireland,Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,Portugal andSpain.

That is 11 countries, one too manyfor a ten-nation combine. But that couldchange quickly. Of interest, Britain,Denmark and Sweden decided not tojoin. (Greece was interested in joining,but did not meet all the criteria to takepart.)

Obviously, a common currency is agreat step to actually unifying coun-tries. Banks and businesses of all kindsare madly scrambling to try to integratethe new currency by the year 2000.This may cause even more difficulty forcomputer engineers trying to makecomputers compatible with year 2000dates. It could all fail. Only time willtell if this economic union is a prophet-ic milestone, or just another one ofmany stones down a long rocky road!

We should continue to pay attentionto the European currency, but withoutdirect revelation from the Eternal, it isnot easy to declare this a definite ful-fillment of prophecy.

—Norman Edwards, with someinfo supplied by James Tabor. &

June 1998

Page 5

Cave Junction, OregonThe Omega Praise Fellowshipwill

be sponsoring a Feast site again this fallat SisQMeadows Youth Camp nearCave Junction, Oregon, Oct 5-12. Finalcosts have not been determined, butcamping in heated cabins and 3-mealsper day will be included in a very rea-sonable price. This is a full-involve-ment Feast with plenty of activities forall ages for the entire eight days. Manykinds of music, scripture readings, mes-sages, and open discussions will beincluded. For more information and abrochure, call John and Mary Beattie at541-855-7220, or Bob and DeirdreSalmon at 541-855-7403. Or, writeOmega Praise Fellowship, PO Box1742, Rouge River, Oregon 97537.

Pagosa Springs, ColoradoThe Front Range Church of God, a

home fellowship consisting of severalfamilies, will be hosting a Feast ofTabernacles this fall in Pagosa Springs,Colorado, at the Best Western OakRidge Lodge from October 5 toOctober 12, inclusive. The theme forthe Feast will be non-controversial fel-lowship, with scripture readings orshort presentations at the beginning ofeach worship service, followed by opendiscussion. If you might be interested inattending, please write Front RangeChurch of God, P.O. Box 6116,Longmont, CO 80501 or email to:abredehoft@juno.com.

San Antonio, TexasMeetings will be held at the Ramada

Inn (Airport), 10811 I-35 North, in beau-tiful San Antonio. (Last year, it was theQuality Inn, but meetings are in the sameplace.) Call 800-797-1234 for reserva-tions. Give the Group Reservation num-ber 87290 and tell them you are attend-ing the Feast of Tabernacles (Church ofGod). Room Rates are $54 + 15% tax, areduction of $5 from last year.. The firstnights’ room must be received within 5days of making reservations, either bymoney order or credit card guarantee. In

order to avoid paying a $1280 fee for the-meeting hall, 60 rooms must be filled byAugust 15th.

There are numerous attractions inSan Antonio within a short distance ofthe meeting facility. For more informa-tion, contact Julian Cruz, Tel: 210-333-7229, e-mail: jcruz@ix.netcom.com

�Lake Tahoe� Feast in FeltonThe “Lake Tahoe Feast,” sponsored

for the past two years by theSacramento area Bible study fellowshipand The WayPublications will continuethis year, God willing, in Felton,California. Felton is located in thescenic Santa Cruz mountains, 10 min-utes north of Santa Cruz. It’s almostlike a “Tahoe Feast By the Sea”!

Dates for the Feast this year areMonday, October 5, throughWednesday, October 14.Again, weare having a do-it-yourself, “bring yourown calendar” Feast with lots of fel-lowship and rejoicing!

The meeting is in the FeltonCommunity Hall, 6191 Highway 9, inFelton. It’s a new hall that seats about300. It has a second room for otheractivities such as youth education, teenfunctions, meals, seminars, etc.

Planned feast activities include afamily dance, circle dancing, workshops,youth and adult choirs, two open familydays, and some group activities and trips.Please let us know ahead of time if you’dlike to help play hymns, sing in thechoir(s), perform music offerings, teachyoung people or help in other ways.

Messages will again be brought tous by members of the assembly, so beprepared to share what you have beenstudying in your Bibles, and to learnwhat others have been studying. Onceagain, presentations will be followedby questions and discussion, so we mayall learn even more.

The tentative schedule is for ser-vices daily at 10:00 a.m., with theexception of two family days(Thursday and Sunday) when no ser-vices will be scheduled, and the weeklySabbath when services will be at 1:30p.m., followed by a do-it-yourself fam-

ily dance (bring your favorite tapes andCDs) at 7:00 p.m. On Friday we planon having services at 10:00 a.m., fol-lowed by a everybody-bring-somethingmeal and family entertainment (bringyour instruments), then an Open Forumsession from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

There are many places to stay andthings to do in the area, we recommendthat you contact the Scott’s ValleyChamber of Commerce at 408-438-1010and the Felton Chamber of Commerce at408-335-2764. regarding housing. Thereare several motels and cabin facilities inFelton and Scott’s Valley, as well ashouses for rent in neighboring MountHermon. Nearby Santa Cruz has manyhotels and motels. There are also beachhouses to rent, in all price ranges.

Because this year we will berequired to pay for the hall in advance,we are requesting each family plan-ning on attending the Feast with us tosend an advance donation of $50, ifpossible, toward the hall rental.(Same principle as the “tithe of thetithe” from our WCG days.) This willbe considered as a donation, as all otherofferings will be, and you will be sent areceipt, as we do for all donations. Youmay send these pre-feast donations to“The WAY,” in U.S. funds, made out to“‘The WAY’ Publications,” earmarkedspecifically “for Feast 98,” and sent tous at our regular address:

The WayPublicationsP.O. Box 1976 Placerville, CA 95667-1976 USAIf you’re planning on attending the

Feast with us in Felton, please notify usby mailing to the address above, or bycalling Bill Creamer at 800-808-2560.

A brief technical note regarding the datesof the Feast: We plan on holding either a nine-day Feast or a ten-day Feast. The conjunction ofthe seventh month will be on September 20th, at7:02 p.m. PDT, which puts the first day of theconjunction Feast of Tabernacles on October 5(beginning sundown, October 4). This is also thestarting date on the Hebrew Calendar.

The lunar crescent in September is predict-ed to be visible locally on the evening ofSeptember 21, which would place the first dayof the Feast on Tuesday, October 6, (beginningthe evening of Monday, October 5). If clouds on

June 1998

New 1998 Feast Sites& Complete List of Sites Covered by SN this Year

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SERVANTS� NEWS

the 21st obscure the view of the crescentmoon, the new moon might be declared to bethe evening of September 22, which wouldresult in the Feast beginning one day later, onthe evening of Tuesday, October 6.

For those who base the new moon on sight-ings of the visible crescent in Jerusalem, if themoon is visible on the U.S. West Coast on theevening of the 21st, it will be only about 34 hoursout of conjunction. This means that, for people inJerusalem, it would have to be visible about 10hours earlier (Jerusalem is about 10 hours eastof the West Coast), or only about 24 hours out ofconjunction. Since the moon must be further outof conjunction in the fall than in the spring to beseen, it may be difficult to see the moon inJerusalem on the evening of the 21st, so it maybe visible in Jerusalem on the evening of the22nd, making the Feast begin on October 6. Ofcourse, if they were to have clouds on the 22nd,they might declare the new moon a day later.

Based on this information, it would seemthat we would have, at the least, two startingdates for the Feast, October 5 and 6, and pos-sibly a third, October 7. Therefore, we plan onholding the Feast beginning on October 5 andrunning for nine or ten days, as needed.

Colo. Springs, Crescent Calendar This feast is sponsored by the

Church of God, Colorado Springs. Thelocation will be 627 N. Circle Dr,Colorado Springs. For many years, thisgroup has been using a calendar basedon the first observable crescent inJerusalem. Festival dates will beOctober 7 through 14. Write JackHines, PO Box 9901 Colorado Springs,CO 80932 or call 719-577-9066 or 719-471-2264 for more information.

Little Chute, WisconsinThis Feast site, like the above site

will also be conducted October 7-14according to the “first observable cres-cent calendar.” It is sponsored by God’sCommunity in the Appleton-Green BayArea, (John Purvins). The theme of thefeast is Christ’s prayer for oneness(John 17). Related messages includeGod’s Presence Among his People, theHeart of the Tabernacle, and Meeting asper 1 Corinthians 14:26-40. Children’sclasses and a picnic overlooking beau-tiful Lake Winnebago are planned. Thelocation of the site and the address towrite for information is 130 W. MainSt. Little Chute, WI, 54140, Tel: 920-

733-5271, Fax: 920-788-2939.

Full Moon Feast in MississippiWe are holding a nonaligned Feast at

Picayune (pic’-a-une), Miss., from Oct.20th, through The Last Great Day onOct. the 27th. The first service will be at7:00 PM on the evening of the 19th.

If you have heard the phrase, “Don’tbe so Picayune-ish” or have been toPicayune you will know what it means.Originally, a Picayune was a Spanishcoin worth 2 1/2 cents. Today the wordmeans “trivial and insignificant.” Butdon’t let that fool you. Picayune isworth a dollar and a dime in good oleSouthern Hospitality.

Services will be once a day at 10:00AM except for the Sabbath and HighDays and then they will be at 10:00 AMand 2:00 PM. The format for serviceswill be songs and either a preparedmessage or an open forum Bible Studyon various and sundry subjects.

Picayune is about an hours drivefrom New Orleans or the MississippiGulf Coast, where in either place a verywide range of recreational activities canbe found. For more information con-tact: Charles Voss @ PO Box 1058;Picayune, MS 39466; Tel: 601-798-8843, e-mail: jacob@datastar.net.

Intercontinental Church of God The following Feast sites are spon-

sored by the Intercontinental Church ofGod and the Garner Ted ArmstrongEvangelistic Association. [The Servants’News staff does not feel that G. T.Armstrong meets the qualifications for aleader in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, but wesee nothing wrong with fellowshippingwith the brethren in these organizations.]

Panama City Beach, Florida:Boardwalk Convention Center, forreservations call 850-234-3484.

Table Rock Lake, Missouri:Kimberling Inn, for reservations call800-833-5551.

Lake Tahoe, Kings Beach,California: North Tahoe ConventionCenter, Visitor Convention Bureau:800-824-6348.

Carberry Tower, Scotland:Carberry Tower ResidentialConference Centre, for info call 011 44131 665-3135.

Canadian sites are also planned,

use the contact information, below. More information is available at

www.coginterlink.org. You may contactus at info@gtaea.org or call the Head-quarters Office in Tyler: 903-561-7070.

Complete List of Sites Coveredin Previous SN Issues this Year

These lists include all the variousnon-aligned sites mentioned in previ-ous Servants’ News issues. We printorganization’s site lists when they sendthem to us, but we have not repeatedthem. Use all three of these pages for agood sampling of non-aligned sites. Wewill gladly print information sent to usabout new sites in future issues. Formore Feast information try the Internetat www.cei.net/~anderson. Or, sub-scribe to The Journal, News of theChurches of God, PO Box 1020, BigSandy, Texas 75755; $18 for 12 issues.

Eastern USA:

Ludington, MichiganSponsored by: independent families inMichigan. If you are coming from thewest, remember that there is a car ferryacross the lake to Ludington.Contact: Darrell West, PO Box 26,Webberville MI 48892; Tel: 517-521-3630.

Paducah, KentuckySponsored by families with rather spe-cific doctrines.Contact: Henry Anderson, 58Meadowrue Rd, Russellville Ark.72801. Tel: 501-968-4546, email:h-andy@cswnet.com

Gatlinburg, TennesseeSponsored by: United ChristianMinistries (Ray Wooten). TheEdwardses, Deweys and others onthe SN staffwill be serving in variouscapacities at this site.Contact: UCM, PO Box 361334,Birmingham AL 35236-1334; Tel: 888-985-9066, email: UnitedBham@aol.com

Orange Beach, AlabamaSponsored by: Learning Together.Contact: Ron and Debi Wilson, 7807N Illinois, Caseyville IL 62232-2058; Tel: 618-344-5203, email:LRNTOG@aol.com

June 1998

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SERVANTS� NEWS

Destin, FloridaSponsored by: CEM (Ron Dart).Contact: CEM, PO Box 560,Whitehouse, Texas 75791; Tel: 903-509-2999, email: cem@ballistic.com

Central USA:

Keystone, ColoradoSponsored by: United ChristianMinistries (Ray Wooten).Contact: UCM, PO Box 361334,Birmingham AL 35236-1334; Tel: 888-985-9066, email: UnitedBham@aol.com

Lake of the Ozarks, MissouriSponsored by: CornerstonePublications(Jim Rector).Contact: Jim Rector, 3802 Olive St.,Texarkana, TX 75503; Tel: 903-792-1352, email: atir903@aol.com.

LeFlore, OklahomaSponsored by: Independent familieswhich observe a “Full Moon Calendar”Feast dates are tentatively Oct 19-25, tobe based on actual moon sightings. Thisis primarily a camping site with motelsavailable some distance away.Contact: John Walker, GeneralDelivery, LeFlore OK 74942

Western USA:

Sun Valley, IdahoSponsored by: Independent families.Two-way teleconferences with RayWooten and Norman Edwards planned.Contact: Adam or Jennifer (Adam’sdaughter) Miller, Tel: 760-941-6120,email: amillerjr@usa.net

Sunriver, OregonSponsored by: Independent families.Contact: Al Murrey, 2160 SW 2ndAve, Ontario OR 97914. Tel: 541-881-8600.

International:

Northern IrelandSponsored by: Independent families.Contact: Greg and Caroline Gault, 253Castlecatt Rd, Devrock, Ballymoney,Northern Ireland BT538BN;Tele and fax: +44-126-57-41616.

Carberry Tower, ScotlandSponsored by: Independent families.Contact: Anthony and MargarethaMiles, Linderudveien 57, 1353 BaerumsVerk, Norway. Tel: 011 47 67 56 22 75,email: anthom@online.no &

Religious Front

“Pray for and share Christ withevery person in America by 2000”isthe goal of Mission America, headed by150 parachurch groups representing over40 million people via its Celebrate Jesus2000initiative. Endorsed by the NationalAssociation of Evangelicals, the SouthernBaptist Convention and Assemblies ofGod, the main prerogatives are door-to-door evangelism, the distribution ofresource packets to churches that includeguidelines on how to present the gospelby direct mail and phone, and follow-upand “discipleship” of new believers.

On April 13, the U.S. Court ofAppeals ruled that Crystal EvangelicalFree Church in New Hope, Minnesota,may keep the $13,450 donated by bank-rupt Bruce and Nancy Young. Thechurch had first pegged of retaining thetithes basing themselves on 1993’s feder-al Religious Freedom Restoration Act(RFRA), but the Supreme Court ruledRFRA unconstitutional last year.However, in April, the appeals courtdecided that religiously emitted dona-tions to churches and charities before adonor files for bankruptcy are protected.

After being the home of five of Jesus’disciples and the third most frequentlymentioned city in the New Testament,Bethsaida has marveled both secularand religious scholars alike.Choosingsome likely ruins along the Jordan River,about a mile north of the Galilee shore,Israeli archaeologist Rami Arav began ajoint excavation in 1987 with professorRichard Freund and the University ofNebraska. Besides unearthing a first cen-tury city, without the later levels of occu-pation found at Capernaum andChorazin, they believe that an Iron AgeCity, capital of the kingdom of Geshurand home of the father-in-law of KingDavid, has been located. Among thefindings are fishing hooks, a wine cellar,an oven, and, for grinding grain, two

basalt slabs. The excavations werefinanced by the Israeli Tourism Ministry.

Basing their beliefs on supernaturalvisitations in the 1820’s to JosephSmith, founder of Mormonism, adher-ents believe he “was called to restore thetrue church that had been lost 16 cen-turies earlier.” According to Mormons,also known as the Church of Jesus Christof Latter Day Saints, God told Smith thatall churches, with specific reference toBaptists, Presbyterians and Methodists,were wrong and to join none. BelievingGod the Father and God the Son havefleshly bodies and that the Holy Ghost isa Spirit Man, Mormons, now numbering10 million, are one of the fastest growingreligions in the world. Persecuted andmaligned in nineteenth-century America,Latter Day Saints boast 56,530 mission-aries, three-fourths of them young males,knocking on doors in 162 countries. Alsobeing the most generous donors of allAmerican church members, giving 7.5percent of their income, last year, theyhad 318,000 neophytes. Besides reveringtheir president as God’s mouthpiece onearth, they belief in new revelationswhich can reverse earlier LDS doctrine,the most known example being the 1890discontinuance of polygamy, which, 47years earlier, Joseph Smith declared hadbeen commanded by the Lord. StephenE. Robinson, professor at the LDS theol-ogy school, Brigham Young University,said in How Wide the Divide, “WhatGod has said to apostles and prophets inthe past is always secondary to what Godis saying directly to his apostles andprophets now.”

World News

Multi-millionaire Saudi dissidentliving in Afghanistan declared holy waragainst U.S. forcesin his homeland andsaid results would be known in the nearfuture. Osama bin Laden was stripped ofhis Saudi citizenship for activities againstthe royal family and has been named bythe United States as a prime suspect in two

June 1998

ReligiousandWorld News

A summary of various newswire sourcesby Angel R. Oyola

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SERVANTS� NEWS

bombings in Saudi Arabia wounding 400people and killing 24 U.S. servicemen in1995 and 1996. “It is incumbent upon allMuslims to wage a jihad [holy war]against them [U.S. forces] and evict themfrom the holy lands,” he said at his base inKhost, eastern Afghanistan. “This is theorder of the holy Prophet [Mohammed]that Muslims fully activate themselves toevict these forces of nonbelievers,” hesaid of the U.S. troops who have been inSaudi Arabia as a regional security forcesince the 1991 Persian Gulf War whichreversed an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.Wearing white clothes, a turban and aRussian-made rifle, Osama proclaimed,“Today we are confronted with a big prob-lem, a very big, a tragic problem... TheArab land has been occupied or a conspir-acy has been planned to occupy [it]. Forthe first time after the death of the HolyProphet, Mecca, Medina and Masjid-i-Aqsa have been occupied by nonbeliev-ers. This is the most important issue of thepresent time. The land where the holyKoran was revealed is now being occu-pied by the Jewish and Christian forces.”Asked if he felt a threat of capture byWestern authorities, Osama said, “TheAmericans can block all roads but theycannot stop the ways of Allah. We are inthe ninth year of our struggle and I am stillalive.”

Israeli based Haaretz newspaper hasreported Palestinian security forceshave stepped up training for wide scalemilitary battles with Israel if the peaceprocess collapses. The preparations forarmed conflict “are becoming increasing-ly professional” and include civil defenseand weapons training of the civilian pop-ulation. The training involved exercisesin fighting in formation and launchingassaults on an army position and a Jewishsettlement. Haaretz also declared thatintelligence reports about the trainingwere of a concern by Defense MinisterYitzhak Mordechai during a cabinetmeeting last week that the ongoing dead-lock in negotiations between Israel andthe Palestinians was leading to violence.

The head of the PalestinianAuthority’s Preventive Security Service,Col. Jibril Rajoub, recently said, “Weview Hamas as part of the nationaland Islamic liberation movement..Outside of the [autonomous areas] theycan do as they wish... At the top of my

list of priorities is the [Israeli] occupa-tion [of Arab land] and not Hamas...” AGovernment Press Office memorandumrecently emitted claims that statementsare in violation of the Oslo agreementobligating the PA to fight terror.

The Council of Jewish Communities,located in Judea and Samaria, hasbegun an information campaign,attempting to educate the public of thedangers of further Israeli withdrawals.One million pamphlets containing mapsof the various withdrawal proposals willbe mailed to homes throughout the coun-try. The 8-page pamphlet explains the cru-cial importance of each of the three areasof the disputed territories: the JordanValley and Judean Desert (which affordprotection and a buffer against an attackfrom the east); the mountain ridge (whereare found many of the Yesha communitiesand the early warning stations, and is thatwhich connects the Jordan Valley to thedensely-populated Coastal Plain); and thearea adjoining the Coastal Plain (3-5 kilo-meters of buffer west of the Arab villagesof Samaria). The pamphlet also discussesthe water sources originating in Yesha(30% of Israel’s water), Jerusalem, theholy sites, and other issues.

According to a highly read newspa-per in Japan, the Japanese governmentissued the warning that “there is a pos-sibility North Korea possesses at leastone nuclear bomb.” Nuclear tests byIndia and Pakistan have created an envi-ronment which made it easier for NorthKorea to develop its nuclear technology.Reports said there appeared to beincreasing risks of a nuclear war break-ing out on the Korean peninsula, in theMiddle East or between China and India.A spokesman said that past events sug-gested North Korea could have beendeveloping nuclear weapons and thateven without nuclear tests by Pakistanand India there was an undeniable possi-bility the communist dictators mightresume such development. “In the end, itis the North Korean government’s deci-sion [whether to develop nuclearweapons]...” After Pakistan said it con-ducted several nuclear tests, Japanvoiced concern North Korea could getassistance from Pakistan that would helpthem to develop nuclear weapons. Eventhough North Korea has denied develop-ing nuclear weapons, while at the same

time insisting it has the right to do so,Japanese officials say that apart fromChina, Pakistan has the closest ties outof all the nations on that continent.

The AIDS virus has the potential tooutsmart virtually all the drug treat-ments now approved in the U.S.,according to a recently released study.“There is a problem with drug resistance,and we can’t fool ourselves,” saidStanford University’s Dr. Robert Shafer,lead author of the new research publishedin the June 1 issue of Annals of InternalMedicine. His team of researchers foundpatients previously treated with multipledrugs tackling the HIV virus, which caus-es AIDS, can develop the idiosyncrasy offull resistance to all available medica-tions, a finding which could indicate adeveloping split in the AIDS epidemic.

Mexico City authorities haveextended a pollution emergency warn-ing amid criticisms reporting it reactedtoo slowly in the face of the worst envi-ronmental crisis in decades. The orderrestrains industrial activity and trafficsome 40 percent under a plan launchedby federal district Governor CuauhtemocCardenas. “These are cosmetic mea-sures,” writer Homero Aridjis, head of anenvironmental group, told a news agency,adding “Mexico City’s inhabitants areturning into mutants. For the first timeI’m afraid of dying due to lack of air.”The capital district of 30 million, one ofthe world’s most polluted metropolitanareas, has over the past few weeks beencovered in a dark haze that cuts visibilitywhen it sets in early in the morning. Thegovernment has warned of more troubleamid the country’s worst environmentalcrisis in 70 years, partly due to forest firesthat have spread in Mexico and CentralAmerica since the beginning of the year.Besides killing 50 people, over 11,000blazes have devoured nearly 815,100acres in Mexico. Recent anti-pollutionmeasures went into effect after ozone lev-els rose past 220 on an air-quality scale,more than twice the US trigger level of108. Mexican officials said the measureswould remain in place until ozone levelsfell below 179. Some 29 percent ofMexico City residents suffer from drycoughs, 19 percent have migraineheadaches, 30 percent have throat painsand at least 50 percent have irritated eyes,according to the Health Ministry. &

June 1998

Page 9

Among the most powerfulforces within human beingsare our needs for security

and identity. We need to have a sense ofwho we are, of what makes our livesworthwhile, of what makes us distinctand different from others—and anassurance that these will continue!There’s no quicker way to discoverwhat gives someone his sense of securi-ty and identity than to threaten to take itaway from him. He will become upset,angry, illogical, even violent—becausethe very foundations of his existence asa person are being threatened.

Christians are no different fromnon-Christians in their need to knowwho they are, why they are worthwhilehuman beings, and in their need forassurance that what they hold dear willnot be taken away from them.Unfortunately, the identity of Believersis often determined by things that,while not necessarily wrong of and bythemselves, are not what should reallyformthe foundation of their identity inChrist. Consider a number of examples.

National IdentityIt is very natural for people to iden-

tify themselves with their country, tofeel a sense of security in being able tosay, “I am an American” or “I am aCanadian.” Wherever they go in theworld, they can let people know whothey are by revealing their citizenship.

The Israelites in Bible times feltvery strongly about their national her-itage; they were the people specificallychosen by God. The Jews of Jesus daywere quick to point out that they weredescendants of Abraham; they couldhold their heads high, no matter whatelse happened (John 5:33)! Even Paulindicated that it would be so easy forhim to put confidence in his nationalheritage:

If anyone else thinks he has rea-sons to put confidence in the flesh, Ihave more: circumcised on theeighth day, of the people of Israel, ofthe tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew ofHebrews... (Phil 3:4-5).

The power of national identity isdemonstrated by the fact that whenpush comes to shove among nations,people who months or years beforewere worshipping together, will laydown their Bibles and song books andtake up rifles and begin killing one

another. Hitler was able to stir up thesense of national identity in most of theGerman people to the extent that theirreligious identity became secondary.Catholics, Lutherans, Adventists werewilling to take up arms against fellowCatholics, Lutherans, and Adventists inPoland, Holland, Norway, France,etc.—because they were Germans, theywere the Master Race! In the UnitedStates during the Civil War,Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians inone part of the country were willing totake up arms against Methodists,Baptists, and Presbyterians in anotherpart—because their regional or culturalidentity was stronger than their reli-gious identity.

Christians are supposed to be part ofan international brotherhood of believ-ers from all nations, yet their identity ascitizens of a particular country is fre-quently a more powerful source ofidentity in their lives. It is the primedeterminer of how they will act in a cri-sis.

Religious Group IdentityOne good way to ascertain the basis

of ones identity in the Christian realmis to complete the statement: I am aChristian because I.... How one con-cludes that statement will reveal muchabout his sense of identity. Some wouldconclude the sentence, I go to God’strue church”—by which they mean aparticular denomination. They seethemselves primarily as members ofthat group as opposed to another group,which might be very similar in doc-trines and practices. They believe Godis working primarily or even exclusive-ly through their organization. In orderto preserve this conviction, they mustremain ignorant of the works of God inother organizations or discount thoseworks as deceptive ploys of the devil.At best they might allow that Godcould work with people in other groups,but only as a rare exception to his gen-eral practice of working through theirtrue church.

Of course, group identity is fre-quently not so extreme. Many truebelievers admit God is working in othergroups, but maintain that their group isthe most correct, the most effective andthe most faithful to the word of God.They tend to view themselves as dis-tinct and separate from other Believers,rather than as part of a larger fellowshipof all Believers. Hence, they are betterthan others—a cut above— more right-eous. For example, the Pharisees atti-tude was, We’re the descendants ofAbraham and I thank you that I am notlike other men.... They could only feelcondescending pity, not true love, forothers who did not belong to their right-eous ranks.

Identifying oneself with one elitegroup usually leads to feelings of supe-riority over others who are not as lucky,as blessed, as smart, etc. The Jews ofJesus day so identified themselves asGod’s chosen people Israel, that it wasextremely difficult for them to see thegospel being preached to Gentiles, towhom they felt superior.

Today, human beings are little dif-ferent. Parents instill in their childrenhow lucky they are to be born IrishCatholic, German Lutheran, Baptist, orJewish—and not something else. If theparents are effective in their teaching,the children grow up with their identi-ties wrapped up in the ethnic or reli-gious group to which they belong. It isvery difficult for them to feel real lovetoward those outside their group.

How do you feel about people inother groups? When you meet them, doyou feel a sense of distinction fromthem or of kinship with them? Do feel-ings of superiority arise in you, or feel-ings of warmth and acceptance? Doyou see yourself as belonging to a dif-ferent group, or as part of some com-mon larger group—like the humanrace?

Followers of MenFrequently, group identity is

focused on the leader. Followers see

June 1998

Security and Identityby Richard A. Wiedenheft

The author is a former principal of a Sabbatarian high school, the former edi-tor of Focus On Truth (a publication of a previous group also called the “UnitedChurch of God”), and a former pastor of the Worldwide Church of God.

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SERVANTS� NEWS

their significance in life in the fact thatthey are following the chosen man ofGod, the one through whom God isworking. They rest secure in knowingthat God will bless them and be withthem for being loyal to His “chosen ser-vant”. And nothing will upset this per-son more than someone who criticizeshis leader.

Several years ago, Mormon mis-sionaries were explaining to me theglories of Joseph Smith, God’s prophetof the latter days. I told them about myexperiences in once having believed ina man as God’s chosen prophet for theend days and how I come to learn hewas very fallible In many respects. Iwent on to point out some of the errorsand failures of Joseph Smith. One ofthe missionaries responded by dogmat-ically defending Smith and his ownconviction that Smith was a man ofGod; but as he did, tears welled up inhis eyes. I had clearly touched a rawnerve; I had struck at the very seat ofhis identity and security. WithoutJoseph Smith, this young Mormon’sworld would come crashing down; hiswhole sense of purpose would bedestroyed. He could not let that happen,even if it meant plunging ahead in blindfaith.

Doctrinal IdentityRecently I sat in on a discussion

about the trinity, among Christians whobelieve in this doctrine. They openlyadmitted that there were many aspectsof this doctrine that they could notunderstand. They confessed it was amystery beyond their comprehension.Questions were asked for which therewere no answers. But in spite of all thequestions and doubts, one commentwas made over and over again: “Wemust not abandon this ancient, ortho-dox doctrine just because we can’tunderstand it.

So many Christians are more sensi-tive about challenges to this doctrinethan almost any other. For some reason,their identity is, at least to some extent,tied to a belief in the trinity. It seems tobe the one doctrine that makes themreally Christian. You can question anddisagree with many other doctrines, butjust don’t mess with the trinity. It issacred ground, even though it is notexplicitly taught in the Bible.

Other Christians are wrapped up in

other doctrines. Sabbath keepers fre-quently get very nervous about a chal-lenge to the Sabbath. I’ve heard severalpeople say, “Why, if we give up theSabbath, we’ll be just like all theProtestant churches.” Obviously, theidentity of these people is in being dis-tinct from Protestants, particularly inregards to the Sabbath. The Phariseesidentity was intimately involved withthe Sabbath—and with how they keptit. They were incensed that Jesus didnot accept their standards on how toobserve the Sabbath; at one point theyeven concluded, “this man is not ofGod for he does not keep the Sabbath”(John 9:16). Much of their personalidentity was rooted in the meticulousmanner in which they observed theSabbath.

Identity of TraditionsFor some, identity is tied to whether

or not they eat certain foods. Once, in adiscussion of a proposed merger of twochurches, the issue of dietary restric-tions came up. One church taughtagainst eating unclean meats (Lev. 11,Deut 14), the other had little concernabout such matters. A member of thefirst group, in reference to the merger,said in a worried tone, “Does this meanwe’re going to begin eating uncleanmeats?” Clearly, to a significant degree,the identity of this person was wrappedup in a doctrinal point—he saw himselfas different and separate from othersbecause he didn’t eat pork. Of all thethings he could hove been concernedabout regarding the proposed merger,eating or not eating pork was of primeimportance. Such is the nature of per-sonal identity when it is rooted in doc-trines.

Identity is frequently wrapped up intraditions—either religious, family, ornational ones. Observing holidays, forexample, plays a major role in personalIdentity and serves to connect us to pre-vious and future generations.Sometimes traditions have such a pro-found meaning in a person's life that hecan’t give them up even after he comesto believe they are not Biblically sanc-tioned. He feels, perhaps subconscious-ly, that If he turns his back on thesetime-honored customs, he turns hisback on his parents, his grandparents,his heritage—on himself! He cannotbring himself to do it.

I have known young parents who,even though they were convinced thatbaptism was for believers only, hadtheir own infant children baptized; theyjust didn’t feel right about not doing it.

If our identity is bound up in ourpractices, whether they stem from tradi-tion or from a desire to obey God, wetend to view ourselves as superior andset apart from those who don’t observethe same laws, and we tend to be verydefensive about them. Those whoobserve Christmas look down on, orfeel sorry for, those who don’t. Thosewho don’t observe Christmas feel morerighteous than those who do. Thosewho don’t observe Easter often hear thecomment. “Don’t you believe in theresurrection?” So intimately is the tra-dition of Easter connected with the his-torical fact of the resurrection! ThePharisees traditions were so importantto them that they would break God’scommandments rather than their owncustoms. Jesus said of them,

And why do you break the com-mand of God for the sake of yourtradition. Thus you nullify the wordof God for the sake of your tradition(Matt. 15:3, 6).

They were so incensed with Hismanner of observing the Sabbath andHis challenge to their concept of Godthat they were ready to kill him (John5:18). If you challenge a person’s tradi-tions, you may find that you are strikingat his very being! He will fight you.

Proper Source of IdentityIn addition to those mentioned above,

there are many other aspects of ones lifethat can provide a sense of identity: oneswork, ones past accomplishments, onesstatus, etc. In most of us, all of these doplay a part in whom we think we are. Butthere is one source that should overshad-ow all the others. Our primary sense ofworth, our feelings of being useful, oursense of being different and distinctshould stem from being children of Godthrough Jesus Christ!

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m notsaying we should have no sense of fam-ily, national, denominational, or doctri-nal identity. But doctrines can beproven erroneous; nations rise and fall;church organizations decline and decay,merge end split! If our identity is tooclosely tied with any of these, we are infor rough times.

June 1998

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SERVANTS� NEWS

If our identity and security are basedprimarily on belonging to God throughHis Son, then we will view otherChristians with feelings of love, com-passion, and warmth instead of superi-ority and self-righteousness—eventhough our doctrines and practices mayvary. Then we will not be sensitive,defensive, and even combative, whenchallenged about things that are periph-eral to our existence as citizens of theeternal kingdom of heaven.

Through Jesus Christ, the walls ofhostility that separate one group fromanother are broken down (Eph. 2:14).We are all one body in Him. To be surewe still have differences. We are stillmen and women; we are still of differ-ent nations and races; some of us areemployers, some are employees; ourdoctrines and practices are different.But if our primary identity is rooted inbeing part of the spiritual body of JesusChrist and the brotherhood we have inHim, these differences can be under-stood, and even appreciated; they neednot be divisive end destructive.

If someone challenges one of ourdoctrines, we don’t need to break out ina cold sweat. Our security is in our rela-tionship with God, not in our doctrines.If disaster strikes our nation, we are stillcitizens of the kingdom of God. If ourlocal congregation or denominationbecomes embroiled in controversy andschism, we are still part of the spiritualbody. If we find ourselves in a meetingwith Christians with different doctrinesand practices than ours, we can try tofind and appreciate the common groundof love and belief in Jesus Christ; wedon’t need to recoil in fear and feelingsof separateness.

Throughout all generations, God ison His throne and human beings canhave an intimate personal relationshipwith Him, they can be part of His eter-nal kingdom, through Jesus Christ.Let there be questions about doctrines,about traditions, about church organi-zations! Let nations rise and fall! Lethuman leaders disappoint us! It mayhurt us, but it should not shake us—for we remain, as always, in the lovinghands of our Heavenly Father. We areHis children, we are citizens of Hiseternal kingdom; we are in His lovingfold. What more identity can wewant? What greater security can wehave? &June 1998

We received this letter from the publishersof Spreading Sunshinenewsletter:

June 8,1998TO: All Subscribers of The Spreading

Sunshine newsletterDear Friends,

It is with a heavy heart that we come toyou to announce that after 3 years and 129issues that we are putting the newsletter tobed and ceasing publication with thisenclosed issue. Joan and I are both involvedfull-time with the ministry of our local churchin addition to administrating 4 large websitesfor the Intercontinental Church of God and theGarner Ted Armstrong EvangelisticAssociation. We have been so involved withwhat we have been doing that we have beenlate on 3 issues and missed one altogether.

We wish to thank all of you that sub-scribed to a master copy of the newsletter sothat you could distribute the newsletter to amuch wider audience than we ever couldhave. We have enjoyed every minute of ourinvolvement with the newsletter. In the last 36months we have received scores of lettersfrom our readers telling of miracles that wereexperienced and lives that were affected andchanged. It has been one of the most reward-ing experiences that our family has ever beeninvolved with. Thank you too, those of youthat supported this work for so long. In thefirst two years, we published weekly and itwas only in the past 12 months that we pub-lished every other week.

The theme of this last issue is Prayer andprobably nothing can be as important as ourcontact with God, our Father. It is our sincereprayer that all of you continue to be blessedand experience the warm �sunshine� that isthe love of God and Jesus Christ. Justbecause the newsletter is ceasing publicationdoes not preclude us from continuing in thespreading of this sunshine throughout theworld. Remain steadfast! As Christ said...

For though I be absent in the flesh,yet am I with you in the spirit, joying andbeholding your order, and the stedfast-ness of your faith in Christ. As ye havetherefore received Christ Jesus the Lord,so walk ye in him: (Col 2:5-6)

The �sunshine� we spread now will payoff later, �Then shall the righteous shine forthas the sun in the kingdom of their Father.Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. (Matt13:43).

In Christian love,The Cumming Family: Chris, Joan & Jody.

5514 l60th Avenue NE, Redmond, Washington98052. e-mail: sunshiner@worldnet.att.net

We at Servants’ Newsare sad to seethis newsletter go. It served many peo-ple and asked nothing from them. Itboasted nothing about itself.

We believe that the Cummings aremaking a mistake to stop this newslet-ter, but that the Eternal will show it tothem in due time. (After all, all of uslived under hierarchical governmentfor years in the WCG before we under-stood what was really wrong with it.)Nevertheless, we cannot help but com-pare the humble service of SpreadingSunshine to the rather extensive claimsmade by Garner Ted Armstrong and hisIntercontinental Church of God. Thename of the group is to some degree aboast. GTA has often claimed to be“the Ezekiel watchman.” Nevertheless,we realize that people have learned theBible through GTA’s preaching.

But Spreading Sunshine does nothave to stop now!!

If someone has the time, ability anddesire to continue Spreading Sunshine,the Cummings will be glad to helpthem continue it. We asked andreceived this message from them:

If someone wishes to take over, wewould ask that they send to us a copy of anissue that they have published and wewould send it to our mailing list with a coverletter. Should any of them wish to continuegetting the Sunshine, they could contactthe new publisher directly.

Should someone decide to become thepublisher, I will provide for them completeprocedures demonstrating how we put thepublication together. I have completerecords on every poem and story I used.Because of copyrights, no one will be ableto charge for the newsletter, of course.Much copyrighted material was used but noone restricted us because we gave it freely.The cost of providing one person with theSunshine weekly for a year was $13.00.When we went to bi-weekly after two years,that cost dropped to $6.50 per person. Wespent most of $5,000 in those three years.One should count the cost before decidingto take this over. I have complete produc-tion records (themes used, sources used,etc.) that I will share with the new publisher.

There it is! A work looking forlaborers! Are there any? &

Want to Start Spreading Sunshine?

Page 12

There is a fast that God does notlike (Isa 58:4). There is an offeringthat God does not like (Jer 6:20).There is a sorrow that God does notlike (2 Cor 7:10). Could there be aunity that God does not like?

Just as there is a Godly sorrow thatworks good and a worldly sorrow thatworks wickedness (2 Cor 7:10), thereis a Godly unity that works good and aworldly unity that works evil.

The word unity sounds so good andscattering sounds so bad, but what doesthe Bible show us about these words?Biblical accounts show us that Satan usesunity for his own evil ends.

In Genesis, the foundation book of theBible, we see that Satan does not wantpeople to be scattered. Satan wants peo-ple to be unified under a man.

And they said, Go to, let us buildus a city and a tower, whose top [mayreach] unto heaven; and let us makeus a name, lest we be scatteredabroad upon the face of the wholeearth (Gen 11:4).

The first scattering was caused byGod (Genesis 11:8). Satan wants God’speople to be unified under a man or anorganization. That way he can use theleaders who he can deceive to deceiveGod’s people.

On the other hand, we see that Godhas allowed his people to be scattered fora good purpose. In Acts 8, His peoplewere scattered to preach the Gospel allover the known world.

In the New Testament, we only seethe word “unity” used twice. Once inEphesians 4:3 “unity of the Spirit” and4:13 “unity of the faith.” There is nomention of being united under a man oran organization.

The difference between Godly Unityand Worldly Unity is the source of theUnity. If it is from God’s spirit workingwithin a person, then the unity is good. Ifit is from unity imposed by a man or anorganization it is bad. Even if that organi-zation calls itself the Church of God.

God wants us to be free to choose hisway (Deut 30:19). He does not respectorchestrated obedience.

The right kind of unity, that comes fromwithin through God’s spirit, is beautiful.

A Song of degrees ofDavid. Behold, how goodand how pleasant it is forbrethren to dwell togetherin unity! (Psalms 133:1)

God is not talking aboutorganizational unity here. Heis talking about the unity that

comes from within God’s people throughhis spirit.

Many have said the problem with theWCG was government. That is partiallytrue. A big problem with the WCG wasthat unity was being forced upon themembership. That was a worldly type ofunity. That unity was built upon a lie.

The lie was that a small group,ordained by men, not by the membershipof the Church of God (God’s people),were God’s representatives on earth andthat they had authority over God’s tithesand God’s people.

Exodus 18 was taken out of context tojustify this lie. Deuteronomy 1:13 clearlyshows that the Nation of Israel chose itselders, not Moses.

Under this lie a fleshly unity wasestablished. It was not built on God’sspirit working within the membership,but imposed upon the membership by animmature ministry more interested in theCorporate welfare than the welfare ofGod’s People. This unity had a certainappeal to the flesh, provided you were notstepped upon unjustly by it.

For many, it was an easy unity. Don’tthink, just trust in men and do what youare told. The fifth commandment hadbeen replaced with:

Exodus 20:12 Hierarchical transla-tion: “ Honor thy Pastor and the Ministry:that thy days may be long in the ChurchCorporation which the LORD thy Godhath put over thee.”

That was a bunch of B.S. (BabylonianStupidity).

An Example of Godly Unity:Pentecost 1995 was an example of GodlyUnity. Over 12,000 members came out ofa Church of “God” that had abandonedGod’s law to worship with a group thatoffered hope. This was not caused byman, but by God’s spirit working withinGod’s people.

An Example of Worldly Unity:There was a conference six months laterwhere a small group orchestrated theevents. Those led by God’s spirit weresilenced by a group of men with privateagendas. Worldly unity was more impor-tant than open discussion.

There were two spirits at this confer-ence:1) The Spirit of Indianapolis

a. Local membership control ofmoney and administration

b. Leadership accountabilityc. Inclusion of membership in the

decision-making process2) The Spirit of the Tower of Babel

a. Centralized control of moneyandlocal leadership

b. No effective leadership account-ability

c. Ignore the membership while pre-tending to listen

There was an unspoken cry at thisconference: “Unity at all costs.” This pro-paganda was not from God. God tells thatwe should not be unequally yoked withanyone who believes differently (2 Cor6:14). We are not to be surprised when“members” and “ministers” go differentways, because they were not part of us (2John 2:19).

There should have been a peacefulseparation between the two groups at thisconference. Instead there was a spirit ofcompromise for the sake of WorldlyUnity. God is not interested in compro-mise, or Worldly Unity.

Those who wanted to return to theWCG way of doing things, won the day.It did not seem to matter that the WCGway of doing things ended in disaster.

The end of this age will see the biggesteffort to unify everyone under one church.God’s people will be martyred. Notbecause they will have done anythingwrong, but because they resist this unity.

Could there be a Unity that Goddoes not like? Yes!!!

Paul says we should not allow our-selves to be put under this worldlybondage (2 Cor 11:20).

For ye suffer, if a man bring you intobondage, if a man devour [you], if a mantake [of you], if a man exalt himself, if aman smite you on the face (2Cor 11:20).

Unity to a man or an organization canbe an idol. We should seek out teachers ofGod’s Word who do not have privateagendas. We should fellowship withthose who are like minded and not com-promise for the sake of Unity.

So why has God let things happen asthey have happened?

It is my opinion that God is hardeningthe hearts of many church leaders todestroy the organized ministry as weknow it. As a group, they have failedGod’s people too many times.

My disgust for these hireling opera-tions should not be confused with therespect I have for the few ministers whohave risen above this and have truly putthe welfare of God’s People above per-sonal and Corporate interest. &

June 1998

Godly Unity vsWorldly Unity

by Harry Curley, Altadena, California

Page 13

On June 18, 1998 UCGIA presidentLes McCullough wrote what amountsto a “state of the corporation” letter tothe brethren who support that corpora-tion with their equity (tithes and offer-ings) and goodwill (prayers for andattendance and participation in theactivities of that corporation). The cor-poration UCGIA is in trouble and thattrouble is spelled c-a-s-h-f-l-o-w.

Like many of his colleagues in thecorporation, president McCullough isambiguous and unclear in distinguishingbetween the UCGIA, a Corporation(herein after referred to as “the corpora-tion”) and the Church of God, ASpiritual Organization (herein afterreferred to as “the Church”).

President McCullough and all thecredentialed ministry are members ofboth the Corporation and the Church.Their non-ordained brethren are mem-bers of the Church only. The corporationis organized, run, and managed by themembers of the corporation for thebenevolent purpose of doing the work ofthe Church and serving the members ofthe Church. These are useful distinctionsto keep in mind as you read selectedexcerpts from this letter.

Because the corporation uses theshorthand name “the Church” to refer toitself, it is easy for members of both thecorporation and the Church to have trou-ble distinguishing between the two. Thisconfusion is doubled for those membersof the Church who are not members ofthe corporation (ie. the non-ordainedbrethren).

President McCullough’s 06-18-98letter is really an accounting of the fail-ures of the corporation to fulfill its statedpurposes for existence. But when it suitshis purposes, he blurs the distinctionbetween the corporation and the Church.It most often suits his purposes when it’stime to apportion and shoulder responsi-bility for the problems facing the corpo-ration, as a selection of quotes from thisletter illustrate.

We have expected at some timeto face an outside source whichwould generate great problems forus. We haven’t and didn’t expect theproblems to arise from among us.

Those problems have come andmuch heartache has resulted. Somemembers have decided to disassoci-

ate themselves from UCGIA for avariety of reasons. Some have joineda new organization led by DavidHulme and others have decided tostay at home. Some have chosen tobecome totally independent. All thesethings have had their effect.

Who does he mean, when he says“us”? The first two sentences seem toallude to the defection of David Hulme etal. By the middle of the second sentenceof the next paragraph we begin to see ablurring between members of UCGIA(who consist of only the credentialed min-istry) and the brethren with the use of thewords “some” and “others”. The first andsecond “some” could be either Church orcorporate members, the last “some” and“others” almost certainly refers to non-corporate Church members. Thus beginsthe implicit denial of responsibility forcorporate failure on the part of corporatemembers by the spreading of the blame tothe non-corporate Church members.

The saddest part is that this is allso tragic and senseless. We allbelieve and accept the same basicdoctrines, but differences of opiniondivide us. Christ tells us that a housedivided against itself cannot stand.The majority of the membershipremains and we must determine tostand together in our common prob-lems. We all need strong leadershipor anarchy will rule and confusion willreign. We know that God is not theauthor of confusion (I Corinthians14:33). So let us make peace amongourselves and join in doing a greatwork.

Exactly who does PresidentMcCullough mean when he says “themajority of the membership remains andwe must determine to stand together inour common problems”? If he is referringto the corporation, then why is headdressing the letter to the non-corporateChurch members? If he is referring to theChurch members who have supportedUCGIA (which seems to be the case)then in what way are these problems ofcash flow the responsibility of thosebrethren? They had absolutely no say inthe hiring, determination of salaries,strategic planning, or anticipated incomeprojections, all of which have been woe-fully botched by the council of elderscommittee system and the home office

management team. These items weredutifully supported by the rest of the min-istry in their yearly general assemblies.

This is not to say that the Churchmembers do not have a keen interest inseeing the corporate members succeed intheir efforts to assist the Church mem-bers in doing the Work of God and serv-ing the members of the Church. It is tosay that it serves no good purpose for thecorporate members to dump the blamefor their bungling of personnel and bud-geting decisions in the laps of those whohad no say in those decisions.

Also, are President McCullough andthe rest of the corporate membershipready to reach out to all the other corpo-rations who are serving members of theSpiritual Church of God and whose onlyreason for existence is (as is UCGIA’S)over a “difference of opinion”? The con-duct of their ministerial services depart-ment in such places as Kansas City andBig Sandy where they have sown divi-sion over the existence of another corpo-ration other than their own would appearto say otherwise.

President McCullough’s plea for anend to “anarchy and confusion” wouldhave a more sincere ring were it not for therecord of UCGIA’s regional pastors andministerial services department. Theyhave gone around with gestapo like effi-ciency expelling anyone from participa-tion in their corporation’s affairs whoshowed any originality not thought of orapproved by the home office or council.These actions were about how to preachthe gospel or organize the local affairs of acongregation. Who has sown more divi-sion in less time among the SpiritualChurch of God in the name of corporatecontrol and uniformity than UCGIA? Thisis not to deny our brotherhood and soli-darity with the corporate membershipbecause we believe and trust that they arealso fellow brethren and Church members.

June 1998

More Corporate Doublespeak from UCGIAby Tim McCaulley

Tim McCaulley attends the services of,and contributes equity and goodwill to theJacksonville Florida congregation spon-sored by the corporation known as theUnited Church of God, An InternationalAssociation. He has been a member of thespiritual Church of God for 28 years, is mar-ried, and has two teenage children.Daytime phone: 904-727-5590 (8AM to4:30 PM). Other times: 904-743-9811.

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It is to say, however, that a plea to “makepeace” rings hollow when it is precededby the ultimatum that it must be on theterms of the corporate membership whoseactions have precipitated the discord.

None of us are blameless in theproblems and difficulties we face. Wecan probably all do better in growingin patience, understanding, andrespect for one another. we all needto learn to bear with one another, rec-ognizing that all are human, subjectto making mistakes, and we will notbe perfected until we are resurrectedto immortality in God’s family.

The above expresses the truth of ourcommon humanity. It is something withwhich no one can argue. It is also a mean-ingless non-sequitur since the topic of theletter is not the common carnal frailties ofall mankind, but the mismanagement ofthe Church’s assets by the corporation.It’s sole purpose for existence is sup-posed to be for the efficient and effectiveproclamation of the gospel to the worldand the feeding and care of the flock.

It is neither cruel nor unconvertedbehavior for the Church to expect anaccurate and honest accounting from thecustodians of the corporation before theydecide whether to place the tithes andofferings of God under their control intothe hands of any who would claim stew-ardship over them.

The task which faces all of us—the council, the administration and allof you as members—is a dauntingone. We are facing extremely seriousdifficulties which try the dedicationand commitment of all of us.

Now exactly who is PresidentMcCullough referring to when he says“us” and “all of you as members”? Thispassage as clearly as any shows thedichotomy between corporation andChurch members. It’s “them” and “us”,and the idea of “we” is totally absent.Strictly speaking, this sentence can onlycorrectly refer to the collective creden-tialed ministry, since they are the onlyones who can be “the council, adminis-tration, and members” of UCGIA.

Again, this is not to say that themembers of the corporation are not spir-itual brethren of the non-credentialedmembers of the Church, and that we donot care about their trials. It is to pointout that the corporations and their mem-bers have become a modern daySanhedrin and created this “wall of sep-aration”(Eph. 2:14) within the Church. It

is complete with its own talmud of con-stitution and bylaws that, when expedi-ent, ignores the counsel of scripture inthe way it isolates the shepherds fromtheir flocks and instead encourages themto be hirelings of the corporation.

For the welfare of us all, we mustask a series of important questions—and answer them honestly. Thewhole body is truly involved in theoutcome. Just how much do webelieve in the system, or organiza-tion, of the United Church of God?How committed are we to its suc-cess? How convicted are we that Godis dealing with us and is a part of thisorganization? Do we want above allfor the United Church of God to suc-ceed? Are we dedicated to doing aworldwide work of preaching thegospel? Are we??

Finally, a clear distinction betweencorporation and Church! For non-corpo-rate member brethren who supportUCGIA some of the following might behelpful in answering the above ques-tions. We repeat the above questionsindividually:

How much do we believe in thesystem or organization of the UnitedChurch of God?

To the extent that it does not ignorethe counsel and guidance of scripture inthe conduct of its affairs on behalf of theChurch. Christ gives His brethren guid-ance on how to answer this question inMatt.7:15-20 and Lu. 6:43-44. Thesescriptures show that a tree (in this case thecorporation UCGIA) is known by its fruit.You cannot gather figs from thorns norgrapes from a bramble bush. It is time totake an honest and sober view of UCGIAbased on its fruits. Are the corporatechieftains false prophets and wolves insheep’s clothing or simply inept?

How committed are we to its suc-cess?

The 1998 spring Holy day offeringsfor UCGIA have increased with fewermembers than they were in past years.Since the primary focus of PresidentMcCullough’s letter is the cash flowshortage, the answer should be obvious.

How convicted are we that God isdealing with us and is a part of thisorganization?

Since when are problems a sign thatGod is not “dealing with us and is a partof this organization”? Haven’t we allknown that sometimes God’s answer toheartfelt and earnest prayer is “no”?

(Luke 22:41-42) Don’t we all know thatGod corrects all whom he loves and thatwithout correction we are nothing morethan Spiritual bastards? (Heb. 12:5-11).

However, this again brings up theintriguing question of exactly who is this“us” that President McCullough is refer-ring to? Exactly who “is a part of thisorganization”? It also begs the question,does God appreciate or endorse thosewho, in the name of the artificial fictionof a corporate entity, promote divisionwithin the brotherhood of The Church?

Do we want, above all, for theUnited Church of God to succeed?

[This statement seems to assume thatthe UCG is the pinnacle of God’s planfor the world. How can anyone provethat? What if God is primarily workingsomewhere else and hopes to steer theUCG members in that direction?—NSE]

Only if the corporation truly servesthe Church. Otherwise it has no claim tothe tithes, offerings, prayers, and partici-pation of the Church.

Are we dedicated to doing aworldwide work of preaching thegospel? Are we?

Asking this of Church members is notbeing honest about the three year historyof the corporation. Over the past threeyears the brethren who support the corpo-ration have been very energetic and inven-tive in looking for ways to proclaim thegospel and feed God’s sheep in addition topaying multiple millions of dollars of theirtithes and offerings to the corporation.

What has been the corporation’sresponse? To squelch any effort that wasnot under the control of the council orhome office! And when the corporateplans did not materialize as anticipated,to blame it on not enough money.Congregations were split and divided.Church members who didn’t “snap to”and endorse all the corporation’s planswere told they were no longer welcomeat the corporations church services.

The corporation has no broadcastministry except that which was inventedby local congregations working on theirown. The corporation’s most significantpublishing effort, The Good News, issimilarly produced beyond the homeoffice confines by men whose primarytasks involve other things.

The corporation has been consistent-ly wrong in its estimation of potentialmembership, income, and needed min-istry. It has consistently diminished theflock God gave it over the past three

June 1998

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years. Now, given this record, to whomwould you think this question mostappropriately applies?

Tom Kirkpatrick (new UCGIA trea-surer) and I are new in our jobs. Weinherited a structure where therehave been problems of overstaffing,other financial commitments, andactions which now plague us. Thesolution is not an easy one. We wantto serve you and all the brethren tothe best of our ability. It is our intentto work in partnership with the mem-bership to produce the best possibleproduct we can, using the talents ofas many of God’s people as we can.These things take time to work out,but we have already made progress.

The “problems of overstaffing, otherfinancial commitments, and actions thatnow plague us” may have been a legacyof corporate mischief by David Hulmeand Steven Andrews but both the coun-cil and General Assembly of Elders (inother words all the corporation) share inboth responsibility and blame for theperformance of UCGIA these past threeyears. The council (except for three res-ignations) is identical to the original onein its membership.

The words “you and all the brethren”are confusing at best. Is this just a redun-dancy (since the letter salutation reads“Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ”) oris this yet another distinction betweencorporation and Church members?

One is also reminded of the famoussaying “the road to hell is paved withgood intentions”. It would also be inter-esting to learn just exactly what the cor-poration considers its “product” andexactly how and when the corporationplans to “use the talents of as many ofGod’s people as we can”.

I don’t like asking this, but can youhelp? It is imperative. We need thelargest offering you can personallymake. We need help from the congre-gations as a whole. Will we all jointogether to resolve this problem? Canwe commit ourselves to this so thatwe can do the work? We are just get-ting positive things going in the mediaarea and now it seems we may needto consider cutting back. Brethren, Ipersonally don’t believe that is God’swill or desire. What do we do? Itseems the Father is testing each of usto see just where we stand and howcommitted we are to doing a world-wide work of preaching the gospel.

Now we see the creative use of thepronoun “we”. Just who is PresidentMcCullough referring to when he says“we” in this passage? Since UCGIA(like taxing governments) possesses nowealth it has not been given by non-cor-porate brethren in the first place, the firstand second use of “we” is an obviousplea for more money from the brethren.It is to be hoped that the next two uses of“we” that refer to joining together toresolve problems and committing our-selves to doing the work refer to both thecorporation and Church members.

Since the corporation has taken totalownership and control of the work ofaway from their non-ordained Churchbrethren, the rest of this passage can onlycorrectly refer to the entire corporatemembership and not their non-creden-tialed Church member brethren.

It would be easy at this point to justsay with a smirk to our corporatebrethren, “you made your bed so now gosleep in it”. But that is neither Christiannor constructive. It is both humbling andsobering to see our collective ministryfaced with the potential for such a monu-mental rebuke and correction by theEternal God. Their most cherishedbeliefs about the righteousness and godli-ness of corporate control are on the vergeof collapse. Would any but the most bit-ter or cynical not yearn for them to onceand for all wake up and finally under-stand that there has been something terri-bly wrong with the way they have beendoing things? Who of us called to a sim-ilar accounting by Almighty God wouldnot want mercy shown to us under simi-lar circumstances?

The tithes and offerings of God’speople are the only finances we havewith which to operate. They have fall-en off for whatever reason. Why?Have some forgotten Malachi 3:9-10?Look at what it says:

“You are cursed with a curse, foryou have robbed me, even this wholenation. Bring all the tithes into the store-house that there may be food in myhouse, and prove me now in this, saysthe Lord of hosts, if I will not open foryou the windows of heaven and pourout for you such a blessing that therewill not be room enough to receive it.”

Okay here comes the guilt trip! Wehave not gotten enough money, thereforeyou people must be stealing God’s tithesinstead of sending them to us. For thesake of the corporate membership may

we sheep suggest a few possible otherreasons for your apparent short fall incash flow?

1. Your ministerial services has runoff hundreds of people and their ministrywhose only sin was wanting to takesome ownership of the work of theChurch on a local congregational leveland do something after the several yearsof council and home office dickeringshowed them that not much of anythingwas coming out of Arcadia.

2. Your presumption that you havethe exclusive ownership of all the tithesof those who attend your services is prac-tically and scripturally indefensible.Because you have taken over the solecontrol and ownership of the work of theChurch and consigned the brethren topaying, praying, staying put, and shuttingup, they have no other means to registertheir displeasure with your stewardshipof God’s tithes and offerings other than tocontribute them elsewhere. Thankfully,God has provided a multitude of alterna-tive ministries that seek to serve theSabbatarian Church of God community.There are even more than enough Feastof Tabernacle sites that are non-aligned tosiphon off Holy Day offerings if youkeep on going down the path of arro-gance and pride that you have been trav-eling for the past three years.

3. Your council and home office hasa three year record of blown budgets,bungled projections, and remarkably lit-tle to show for all the millions of dollarsof God’s tithes and offerings you havespent over that time.

I know most of you indeed havebeen very supportive of the counciland management team. Your letterstell us that. I know you want to see theGood News subscription list grow,and the invitation for life it carries, bemade available around the world. Ialso know most of you are very sup-portive in your tithes and offerings.That is why this letter is so hard towrite. I thank you for all your effortsmost sincerely. But I must ask, Canyou do something more to get yourwork through this time of financial cri-sis? It is simply not financially respon-sible to continue on the basis of oneset of projections when all the factsindicate something else is needed.

“Your work”?!!! By what fiction dothe efforts totally controlled and origi-nated by the corporation become theresponsibility of the Church?

June 1998

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Now is the time for us to unitedly seek God’s answer towhether or not he is pleased to work through us in the man-ner the General Conference and leadership of the Churchhas laid out. we individually or collectively may still havesome blind spots which God is trying to show us. Let us allask him to make known, as dramatically as he has in timespast, whether he is with us now in fulfilling our, and we hopeHis plans. His will be done.

A sober, humble, and reasonable request.As president of the United Church of God, I must ask if you will

join together as the combined congregations of God’s people for aspecial day of fasting and prayer.

The council and I are asking you to set aside theSabbath of June 27 for this special time. All of us need torepent of our sins and grow closer to our Father. We needto ask him in the most heartfelt manner for his interventionand help. We need to ask God to provide new coworkers tohelp carry the heavy load. We need to ask Him to give thecouncil the wisdom only he can give to make the properbudgetary adjustments so that such a problem doesn’t ariseagain. Those adjustments will hurt, I am sorry, but there isno alternative. We should ask God’s blessing on each indi-vidual in His Church. We need to ask Him to grant us thewillingness to make a special sacrifice at this time and helpHis Church out of the deep problems which afflict it”

Asking the brethren to fast is entirely appropriate in such asituation as that which faces the corporation UCGIA, as is seek-ing Godly repentance for our collective sins. We then see a ratherinteresting reversal of Christ’s prayer for the Father to send morelaborers for the harvest (Matt 9:37-38, Lu 10:1-2). PresidentMcCullough and the corporation do not need more laborers forthe harvest, but rather more harvest for the excess of laborers.

For the Church members who support the corporationUCGIA the dilemma is whether bailing out UCGIA will resultin the repentance of its members from their irresponsible stew-ardship of God’s tithes and offerings or reinforce those corpo-rate members (particularly the council, the home office, andministerial services in their intransigence.

EpilogueChrist teaches an important lesson for both the brethren

who support the corporation UCGIA and the brethren who aremembers of that corporation.

“He also spoke this parable: ‘A certain man had a fig treeplanted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it andfound none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, “Lookfor three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and findnone. Cut it down, why does it use up (waste) the ground?” Buthe answered and said to him, “Sir let it alone this year also untilI dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well, But ifafter that you can cut it down”’” (Luke. 13:6-7).

The brethren who have supported the fruitless efforts of theUCGIA fig tree these past three years are waiting to see if itscaretakers (the corporate members) will take the actions need-ed for it to bear fruit or not. I intend to take ChairmanMcCullough’s requests before God in prayer with fasting. I hopePresident McCullough and the rest of the “Sanhedrin” corporationwill tear down that wall of separation between them and the restof their brethren in the Church. Right now I rather doubt it, butGod has not run out of miracles if the occasion warrants.&

UCGIA Ministry LetterIgnores Member FastThe following letter was written by Les McCullough, pres-

ident of the UCGIA on June 26, 1998. Please note that this isone day beforethe fast scheduled in the previous letter sentto the members. We, as well as many UCGIA members, findthis letter almost beyond belief. It contains a complete pro-gram of budget cuts which were implemented before the mem-bers had a chance to fast and pray, asking the Eternal for hiswill in the matter. These cuts included 30% of the full-timeministry being reduced to half pay (or in a few cases no pay)—one of the largest cuts in any “Church of God” history.

The letter makes no mention of the member fast at all. Itnever mentions the possibility of divine intervention to improvethe situation. It notes that 10% of the membership left in 6weeks, but seems totally unconcerned with why those membersleft and says absolutely nothing about making organizationalchanges that would cause members to return—or that wouldcause existing members to stay. Indeed, there seems to be littlesorrow that existing members are leaving—separatingbrethren in local areas. It makes many rosy, positive state-ments, but almost none of them have any substance to them.

There is not a hint of a plan to transform UCGIA into anorganization that would serve the many scattered Church ofGod brethren better. The UCGIA has done little in three yearsto bring new members to the organization. The only placewhere they seem to be able to promise and deliver is to bud-get and spend all of the money that they receive.

We would hope that after a major event such as the doc-trinal reversal and breakup of the Worldwide Church of God,that ministers from that organization would stop and serious-ly ask: “What does the Eternal want us to learn?” Instead, itlooks like they are trying to go on in the way of the “50s and60s” as if nothing has changed. We do not like to be the bear-er of bad news, but it seems that if major changes are notmade in the UCGIA, that it will continue its current path ofdiminishment, until it cannot even pay its own headquartersstaff. We really think that anyone who looks to this organiza-tion to pay its retirement is making a real mistake. We hopethat those leaders and ministers in the organization will real-ize that neither their own documents nor their own membersregard the UCGIA as “the one True Church”. If they do notdo a superior job of serving the brethren in their organization,should they not expect it to continually decrease in size?

Following is Les McCullough’s letter:

June 26, 1998Greetings Fellow Ministers and Wives,

Most of you are probably aware of the cost-cutting mea-sures which went into effect this week. Most of them were ref-erenced in the member letter which should have been receivedby now. But I felt it important that I give you a personalupdate on what has actually taken place. We would like you tobe armed with the facts when questions begin to arise.

We are most grateful for the outstanding example being setby the ministry during this most stressful time. It has beenencouraging to talk to so many of you over the past several days

June 1998

continued from previous page

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and see a willingness to make the neces-sary sacrifices for the good of the Church.

This is the spirit and attitude that thework was built on in the 50s and 60s. Itis good to see that same spirit at work inthe ministry of God's Church today.

This past week the Council met fortwo days via teleconference to finalize anumber of changes in Church personnel.The total meeting time was about eighthours. This was grueling and quiteexhausting.

In preparation for this meeting theRegional Pastors made contact withmost of the full-time ministry to discussour manpower needs in each region.Following these discussions, theMinisterial Services Team met for twodays in Arcadia to review all the inputfrom these men.

All in all hundreds of man-hourshave been invested in this process toarrive at the most equitable decisions.

A few days prior to these meetings,the Council was informed by our trea-surer, Tom Kirkpatrick, that $840,000 ofcuts in the salary area (on an annualbasis) were needed immediately, inaddition to other expense cuts.

This was the order of magnitude ofcutbacks that needed to be made to sur-vive to the fall festivals in light of ourcurrent level of financial support.

Some have wondered about theabruptness of this action. Suffice it tosay that we have lost at least 1500 peo-ple between the Last Day of UnleavenedBread and the Feast of Pentecost. This ismore than 10% of our Church atten-dance departing over a period of sixweeks. Simple mathematics tells youthat our income will drop proportionate-ly. We are happy to report that theincome has not dropped quite that dra-matically, but this has been largely dueto the generous Holy day offerings.With no Holy days for the next fourmonths, we are facing a serious crisis bySeptember 1. These cuts are necessarynow to ensure our ability to pay salariesand other commitments that will be duebetween now and September. Whilethese are the most painful days any of ushave experienced in some time, it isabsolutely crucial that we make thesecuts. We could hide our heads in thesand and continue spending at our cur-rent level, even though our membershiphas decreased. In our opinion, thiswould be foolish and contrary to whatGod has clearly shown us. We must do

the right thing and we must do it now.As a Church with limited assets, the

only area where we can make these kindof cuts is personnel. Our Home Officestaff has been reduced to a bare subsis-tence level of 12 full-time people. Weare operating with just under 100 full-time men in the field ministry, whichequates to an average workload of 115people in attendance for each pastor.This is considerably fewer when com-pared to past years.

In order to achieve our goal for cuts,we took a look at the entire ministry andbegan to make adjustments. We believethat all our men are loyal and dedicatedservants of God, but we must face thereality of how many men do we need atfull pay to accomplish the task of caringfor the people of God. It is painful toconsider, but we had to do it. Based onthe workloads, it was clear that changescould be made in the ministry. We onlywish we had more time for families tomake the necessary adjustments in theirlifestyle to assimilate a severe loss inincome. Please know that if we had theluxury of time, there would be no ques-tion but that we would extend that to allour employees.

In the US field ministry we have 42pastors each serving 100 members orless in regular attendance. We realizethat there are a number of mitigating cir-cumstances—multiple churches, longdistances, etc. But this is the reality. Inorder to continue to serve the membersin these areas, we have contacted manyof these men and asked them to look forpart or full-time work. We will pay thema reduced wage to continue pastoringthe local congregations where they arepresently assigned. This plan keeps menin our employ, continues the service tothe brethren, and allows a minister toaugment his income with an outside job.We have had success with this programin the past in very limited areas. We arehopeful that this will be received with apositive attitude by the men who will beinvolved. Many have already contactedus and it has been quite humbling tohear their inspiring comments. It is soencouraging to see the spirit of sacrificethat these men exhibit. We owe them alla great debt of gratitude.

I am sure you are all interested in whohas been put on 1/2 salary and who has-n't. While we can't give you all the namesat this present time, we can provide somelimited information as we go into the

weekend. In the past few days 29 menhave been contacted about going to a 1/2salary. This equates to almost 30 percentof the entire ministry. Roughly 1 in 3 ofthe full-time men has been asked to go toa 1/2 salary. We have also terminated afew men in areas that we can adequatelyhandle by other pastors in the same cityor by combining Church circuits with aneighboring pastor. We feel badly that insome of these cases we could not evenoffer a 1/2 salary. We truly value thesemen, but simply felt, given the circum-stances, that we had no other choice.These are very difficult matters and nodoubt there will be factors which getoverlooked. When you deal with thislarge a group of men, there will alwaysappear to be inequities. But, please beassured, we have done our best to be fairand equitable to everyone. We want toemphasize that these men who weregiven 1/2 salary are all considered full-time employees and pastors, but will gen-erally be less available to the member-ship (primarily evenings and weekends).

Of course, in addition to the reduc-tions to 1/2 salary, and the terminations,we also begin across the board salaryreductions for all in the regular full-timeministry (but not those going to 1/2salary) with our next paycheck. Thesereductions will be in effect through theFeast of Tabernacles. It is our desire torestore the salaries to their current levelafter the Feast, but obviously this willdepend on our financial condition at thattime. We have also drastically reducedministerial expense. If you have anyquestions about these items, then pleasecontact one of the members of theMinisterial Services Team.

The point we must be clear on is thateveryone in the organization will beasked to make some sacrifices. Givenour sudden membership loss, we areforced to take these steps. With God'sblessing, we will weather this currentcrisis and move forward with our goal ofpreaching the gospel and caring for thepeople of God.

Thank you all for the wonderfulcomments we are hearing. It is trulyinspiring to work shoulder to shoulderwith all of you. Let's pray that Godbinds us closer together through thiscurrent storm and makes us a strongerbody for the future. Please feel free toshare this information with your congre-gations.

—Les McCullough &June 1998

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We print a representative sampling ofour mail—both positive and negative.Writers should specify how much of theirname and address they would like us to print.

Spread Gospel�Run Local AdsLETTER: June 8, 1998Dear Brethren:

Thank you for the article (page 6 of theMar/Apr 1998 Servants’ News) regardingthe local effort to spread the gospel here innorthwest Indiana. Donna and GeorgeMcCammon are instrumental in the effort asthey send all the booklets out. In case anybrethren want to know, Tom Justus inSpringdale, Arkansas created and printedthe small booklets.

An update: We have received a total of15 responses to the ad. Four of the respons-es were from Knox, Indiana, where we havediscovered a small non-affiliated Sabbathkeeping organization. We are very excitedabout these new (to us) brethren. They wrotein for the booklets because they wanted toknow who else believed Christ was resur-rected on the Sabbath. They do keep thePassover on Nisan 14. Donna McCammonvisited them last Sabbath and we hope tocontinue communicating with them.

I am very excited to see “Shelter in theWord” and will offer these articles to all thepeople who wrote in for booklets. Keep upthe good work!!

—Carolynn Landgrebe, IndianaRESPONSE: Thank you very much. I

believe it is efforts like yours that will even-tually spread the Gospel nearly everywhere.By this, I do not mean that everyone must runads in a paper, I mean that everyone shouldreach out in love and service to others, inwhichever way Christ leads them. If the newgroup you found allows others to commentand participate, it might make sense for a fewof you (possible all of you) to stop meetingwhere you are and join their group for a while(if they will accept that). That may sound rad-ical, but if we think of the ministry of Jesusand Paul, that is exactly what they did. Theynever built the “Synagogue of Jesus” or “Thechurch of Paul” and then mounted a cam-paign to get others to come to it. Most of therecords we have are of them traveling toexisting synagogues and groups and thenspeaking to them.

Several times while I worked for theGlobal Church of God, we received contactslike yours, from small groups of Sabbathkeeping brethren. They usually liked the

GCG literature, but theydid not want to disbandtheir local meetings,drive fifty miles to the

nearest GCG group, and send “tithes” to adistant headquarters where they knewnobody. So the relationship ended. How canthese little groups ever come to believethat God works only through one humanorganization, when they have learned somany truths directly from the Bible andChrist?

But independent local groups, and non-controlling national (or international) organi-zations are able to work with these littlegroups that the Eternal is calling directly.Let us do it with zeal!

—NSE

Sabbath School Lessons & BickeringLETTER: June 10, 1998To the Ministers of Servants News:

I once read somewhere that there waschildren’s Bible stories available throughyour work. I believe Ron Dart was in chargeof them. I would like to have some sent tomy granddaughter for her children: [addressdeleted].

I think one of the greatest mistakes Mr.Armstrong made was not providing aSabbath school study for the children in hiswork and church.

I receive your Servants’ News but Ibelieve the “nit picking”, backbiting gossip ofthe other churches and ministers should bestopped. I’m sure according to the Bible it isnot pleasing to God to be printing all of thosemistakes they make. Forget the sins of oth-ers. Let’s have more on studies and lessonsof the Bible. [personal request deleted].

—NB, IllinoisRESPONSE: At this time, we are not

offering Ron Dart’s Sabbath SchoolLessons, but you may contact him directly atChristian Educational Ministries, PO Box560, Whitehouse, TX 75791, Tel: 903-509-2999, Fax:903-509-1139, e-mail: cem@bal-listic.com.

We do not enjoy printing sins and mis-takes of others, but much of the Bible islessons and mistakes of others! We printwhat we believe are the doctrinal mistakesand flagrant sins of those teaching otherstoday, in order to help others understandwhere they should assemble, and what evan-gelistic efforts they should support. Nearlyall of the historical books of the OldTestament are about what people did—and

the majority of those things were mistakes.Of the 40 kings of Israel and Judah, thescriptures have something good to say aboutonly a few of them. Many passages of theNew Testament are warnings about evilplans, false teachers and false teachings.Sometimes, names of specific sinners arementioned (Matt 7:15-27; 28:11-15; Acts8:9-23; 24:25-27; 1Cor 5:1-6; 1Tim 1:18-20;2Tim 2:16-18; 2Tim 4:10, 14-15; 2Pet 2:1-22; 3Jn 9-10; Jude 3-23; Rev 2 & 3). Thereare many other scriptures about church prob-lems, but the above should be enough tounderstand the idea.

—NSE

Real Heresies Among UsLETTER: May 27, 1998Dear Marleen and Norm,

[Personal paragraph omitted.]Satan certainly has been busy among

the brethren, deceiving some to believeJesus was just an ordinary man, not ourSavior, some “other” will save mankind, theNew Testament was not written by the apos-tles, that it is not valid or inspired by God,only the Old Testament is inspired and pos-sibly only Moses’ books and on and on.

We certainly need to pray without ceas-ing, about these matters and seek God’sconstant guidance. I hope you are well andthriving.

—CM, CaliforniaRESPONSE: We have heard someone

teach all of the heresies that you have men-tioned. We think it is interesting to note thenature of people who tend to get caught up inthese heresies. Is it people who have obvioussins and want to disprove most of the Bibleso that they will not be convicted of sin? No!It is usually people who live fairly goodhuman lives—they feel good enough aboutthemselves that they think that they really donot need a Savior or the Holy Spirit to dwellin them. They feel “knowledgeable andskillful” enough in “explaining the law” sothat they can explain away anything they doas righteousness. They are also “knowledge-able and skillful” enough to find “errors” inthe New Testament, and maybe even somein the old. It has been my experience thatthings seem to go very well (physically)speaking when people depart from Jesus—for a while. Then, if they continue in thisthinking for a few years, their entire livescome apart. They have left their Savior andlost His Spirit—their human reason, good asit may be, can no longer carry them.

The nature of man is explained in thefirst five books of the Bible: “...although theimagination of man’s heart is evil from hisyouth...” (Gen 8:21). The coming of a

June 1998

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Messiah was also clearly prophesied: “I willraise up for them a Prophet like you fromamong their brethren, and will put My wordsin His mouth, and He shall speak to them allthat I command Him. And it shall be thatwhoever will not hear My words, which Hespeaks in My name, I will require it of him”(Deut 18:18-19). Acts 3:19-26 clearlyexplains that Jesus (Yeshua) fulfilled thisprophecy. To doubt these and many similarscriptures is to say that the entire NewTestament is a clever hoax.

To my knowledge, there is not oneancient documentthat supports the “hoaxtheory”. If the New Testament books werenot written by whom they claim to be writ-ten by (or who they are traditionally attrib-uted to), why do we not find at least onewriting of a Roman, Jew, or some otherenemy of the Christians exposing when andhow these “phony” books were supposedly“concocted”? The truth is we have numerouswritings from the enemies of the Christiansduring the second and third centuries. Wehave records of efforts to dissuade Christiansfrom their religion. But the argument that“all of your writings are fake” is neverbrought up. Does anyone believe that theEternal caused many hundreds of ancientNew Testament manuscripts to be preserved,but no manuscripts documenting the “NewTestament hoax theory” to be preserved, andyet He expects everyone to reject the NewTestament and accept the “hoax theory”? I,for one, do not!

—NSE

Computer 2000 Problem ArticleLETTER: February 20, 1998Dear Norman,

Your article about the computer prob-lems in Year 2000 is so well written, I’veread it twice. (Dec 1997 issue). Hope manypeople will take time to read it. Thanks fortelling us how to prepare for the hardshipthat will come. Could you do a print-out ofthe article by itself for us to hand-out to oth-ers?

[Literature request omitted.] Thanks somuch for your service.

—Mildred Barnette, GeorgiaRESPONSE: As soon as we finish the

update to How Does the Eternal GovernThrough Humans? we will work on a sepa-rate booklet about the year 2000 problemsand how to prepare. We intend to write thisbooklet for people with no Church of Godexperience. We feel it is an excellent oppor-tunity to preach the Gospel to others—toshow that our nations are greedy and notobeying the Eternal, and that He promises apunishment for doing this.

Judging from recent progress reports, itlooks like many industries and governmentswill not be ready. As one commentator point-ed out, even if the USA was perfectly readyfor the year 2000, failure of internationaltrade and military takeovers in other coun-tries are likely to throw the world into chaos.Most other countries are far behind the USA.The possibility that even in the USA a state ofemergency will be declared and martial lawwill be imposed is very real. The constitutiondoes provide for a state of emergency andnumerous regulations for implementing ithave already been written. While this maysound overly dramatic, if the FederalGovernment is unable to collect taxes, theycould choose this approach rather than pass-ing a very simple, emergency tax bill. InFebruary of this year, Arthur Gross, the manin charge of year-2000 compliance for theIRS resigned. In a search for his replacement,the IRS commissioner stated “Mr. Gross’ssuccessor will face the biggest technologymanagement challenge in the world.” Thereare about 550 days left before January 1,2000. Companies with much simpler com-puter systems have taken much longer thanthat to become year-2000 compliant.

—NSE

Gospel Preaching & Year 2000LETTER: May 27, 1998Norm,

Thanks for your article in the Servants’News that I received today! Well done! Yoursis a fair assessment of all the major off-shoots, their leadership and direction. I espe-cially liked the last few paragraphs remindingthe reader of HWA’s determination to knowthe scripture to the very best of his ability,and to teach others who had no knowledgeof the Sabbath and other scriptural truths. Itis a stark contrast to those who today areworking hard to scavenge the remnants ofthe WCG, concerned more with authoritythan with service. Regardless of what HWAwas or was not, none can deny his tirelessdevotion to teaching his message, basedupon thousands of hours devoted to learningGod’s word. Where do we stand when com-pared to his example of tireless devotion towhat he believed? (The person writing thissure falls short!) Can we agree that “if youteach it [God’s truth], they [who earnestlydesire to hear] will come”? I hope so.

Also, I appreciate the well-balanced arti-cle on the Y2K problem in the [Dec 1997]issue. I expect we will see some very high-profile failures, lasting days, weeks ormonths, depending on the situation. Thosecompanies/organizations depending onreverting to an all-paper system in the inter-

im will be swamped with paperwork to theextent that they don’t survive, especially ifthey have competitors who had the foresightto be prepared. The state of the U.S.Government Agencies and the ElectricUtilities, not to mention the questionablereadiness of the European nations (alsoabsorbing the reprogramming to include the“euro”) as well as that of third-world coun-tries is of major concern. There are severalweb sites with some very good informa-tion—www.year2000.com is one—helpingto show the nature and extent of the dilem-ma. Compuserve has a Year 2000 forumaccessible on the web from theCompuserve home page. (One can view,but not post, without a membership.)

Regards,—”Random Axe”

RESPONSE: Thanks for your encourage-ment. This is very significant coming fromsomeone with your background—one whohas worked with ministries as well as run alarge a large successful business.

—NSE

Unusual Year 2000 ProblemsLETTER: June 13, 1998

I just found the first (and creepiest)instance where the year 2000 crisis is notjust a digital problem, but a very “analog”one, as well. It seems that the burial indus-try (or whatever you call it) is faced with anoversupply of headstones pre-carved witha “19” prefix.

This is pretty much out of my league,but apparently it’s common to preorderyour tombstone, specify an inscription, andthen leave a space blank for the actualdate. Because it’s cheaper to pre-carve(who knew?), people add the “19” prefixand then leave the remaining part of thedate for loved ones to fill in.

The companies responsible for holdingonto these pre-carved tombstones havestarted worrying that they’ll have a lot ofuseless “19” grave markers unless anawful lot of people, pardon the crassness,drop dead over the next year and a half.One company is experimenting with acement like paste to fill in the number “19”and has had results buffing the stone tohide the error, while others are experiment-ing with brass plates that fit over the “19.”

I find this particularly fascinating from anarchaeological viewpoint, because centuriesfrom now, archaeologist will wonder what themystery brass plate meant on some of ourmarkers. Were we hiding dates? Did somepeople in our culture die twice? Was brassplating a sign of nobility? Or poverty?Anyway, you get the idea, and I’ve obviously

June 1998

had way too much coffee, but I think this onehelps us keep our perspective.

Of course, the truly dark and morbidlymissing link in all of this is the opportunityto buy them up wholesale and offer themup to the poor data managers who can’tface another day struggling with the digitalyear 2000 crisis (couldn’t resist!).

—John (e-mail)RESPONSE: The headstone problem will

probably resolve itself in a true free-enter-prise manner. Somebody will find a verygood way to repair or cover the stones, sothey will not be wasted. Also, repairedstones will sell at a discount compared tonew, properly etched “2000” stones. (Andsome shysters will probably try to sellrepaired stones as “2000” stones to unsus-pecting customers.)

But the idea that someone might try touse those “19” stones before the year 2000does give us pause for thought. Many small-er countries are loaded with military hard-ware that they obtained inexpensively whenthey were “friends” with a superpower. Butwhen small countries want to attack theirneighbors, they often have to greatly dis-tance their relationship with superpower lestthe superpower pressure them not to attack.Realizing that they may not have the abilityto repair or reprogram military hardware thatis not year-2000 compliant, will somenations decide to attack their enemies before2000 arrives? From an evil military perspec-tive, it makes a lot more sense to expendone’s military hardware against an enemythan it does to see it become useless due to acomputer bug. Could many people die insuch a war? Yes! But is not this a good timeto buy headstones?

We need to realize that the Earth containsmany evil men. Should we fear them? No!But, all of us need to learn to have a muchgreater faith in our Father in Heaven, and torealize that our existence here can be verytemporary.

—NSE

Organization Affiliation AddictLETTER: May 30,1998

It has been about 42 months (or 1260 to1335 days, or about 3-1/2 years) since wefinally left WCG. Although it was good thatwe “came out of her”, it has not been a“place of safety” out here. After affiliationwith GCG, UCG, PCG, CGG, and now var-ious splinters, our issues that we focus onhave changed somewhat in their priority. Ihave just finished your June, 1995 article on“How Does the Eternal Govern ThroughHumans?” There is a paradox in my writingthis to you.

I want to ask about your personal churchhistory, and the history of the Servants’News organization. Does my wanting to askthis indicate that I have been an organiza-tion-addicted churchie since 1969? I am nottrying to corner you with the question—it is aquestion that I am honestly asking myself.As stated above, the priority of issues haschanged with each affiliation change sinceJanuary, 1995. The new #1 question nowseems to be: should we even look for anyparticular organization? It seems paradoxi-cal to ask you, considering your articlewhich points out the importance of “Attitudenot Form”. Hopefully, I can learn more abouta “Messiah-centered” organization fromyour “Assembling on the Sabbath” article.

Nevertheless, if you do have informationof how you started, and how the Servants’News is organized, it would help this“Organization Affiliation Addict”. Perhaps itcan lead to a cure.

—Ted M. I. McCordUKZC41B@prodigy.com

RESPONSE: Your questions are fair. Igraduated from Ambassador College in1978, and worked for the Worldwide Churchof God in various technical areas until 1992.Toward the end of my stay in the WCG, Iwitnessed many events that convinced methat people within that organization, all theway up to the top, were dealing dishonestlyand that the Eternal was no longer using it inthe same way. I began to study my Bible andreally see that false doctrines were beingpreached.

I quit my WCG job to help RodMeredith start the GCG. I felt that theEternal was testing everyone to see if theywould leave one corporation to go where thetrue doctrines were being preached. It was 6weeks before he was able to pay me. WhenMeredith began, there were no full-timeWCG ministers with him. He had faith thatthe Eternal would take care of him and sup-ply what he needed, and it worked out. Headmitted a number of errors in the way hehad dealt with church government in thepast. But as several long-time WCG minis-ters began to join him, it became largelyback to the same old church government“business as usual”.

As I continued to study the Bible, I real-ized that there were questions that RodMeredith and other long-time WCG evange-lists could not answer—especially in theareas of government, the Passover, etc. Also,Mr. Meredith admitted on more than oneoccasion that he simply did not have time formajor study in some of these areas. Ofcourse I, as a GCG board member, wasexpected to speak the “party line” on all doc-trines. After about a year in the GCG, I

began to realize that if I were going to beable to grow in understanding and share withothers, that I would have to stop working forthe GCG. Yet, I did not have any idea whereI should fellowship, except with Church-of-God organizations. I quit working for theGCG after two years, late in 1994. For moreinformation on this part of my life, you maywrite for our package on our relationshipwith the Global Church of God.

After that, I decided to start Servant’sNews, as a publication to share sincere infor-mation and study. Soon, I was able to studyand write my paper, How Does the EternalGovern Through Humans?At that point Ibegan to realize how far away WCG-stylechurch government was from the Bible. Ialso began to realize that the Eternal did notbreak up the WCG in order to create a dozenor more much weaker, look-alike organiza-tions somewhere else. If God really wantedus to learn hierarchical government—that herules top-down through human organiza-tions—would he do it by placing corruptmen at the top? Would He then have dozensof others claim they are Armstrong’s succes-sor, apparently none of which have showngreat faith or other spiritual gifts?

What I believe the Eternal has done isallow many to learn from HWA’s diligent jobof teaching, but that HWA seems much likeSolomon—his desire for riches and possiblywomen took him away from his job. TheEternal allowed his way to go on so that wecould see the fruit and dangers of humanhierarchies: we can see how many ministerssimply followed whoever would pay them—how few stood up for what they understoodto be truth. Now, the Eternal has many peo-ple all over the Earth who are trained in muchtruth, but who will never be tempted to startan organization where people look to a manin place of Christ or the Scripture.

Today, Servants’ News goals are muchthe same as stated in its original issue, threeyears ago. I have learned a lot along the way:Bible teaching, and how to ask for things fromGod and how to listen to Him. I realized thatI did not want to incorporate or apply for IRStax exemption. In 1996, we moved toMichigan where George and Pam Deweynow help us. They had seen the error of theWCG government back in 1978. We havevisited a great many congregations and talkedto a great many people. The vast majority ofpeople whom I have met who are spirituallyat peace with the events in the WCG duringthe past 10 years are people who have a viewsimilar to mine. We can talk to others in anygroup and not be upset with what we hear. Wecan learn from them. Most people whobelieve they must stay in a certain group sim-ply do not want to talk about how they know

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that their leader and group is the right one. Ihave had only a very few people spend anylength of time trying to convince me that Ishould join their group. And once I began ask-ing them questions about their group, theyusually did not want to talk about it any more.

While being at peace and being able toanswer questions is not a proof of truth,“uptight people” who cannot explain theirbelief are a good indication that error waspresent. Think about it. If a person believesthat they must follow a certain leader for sal-vation, but that person cannot easilyexplain to anyone who might ask exactlywhy they must follow, are not they puttingfaith in that man, rather than in the Eternal?Can they afford to be uncertain of their beliefon such a critical point?

There are statements in the Bible that tellus to cooperate with the leaders whom theEternal sets up. But there is no commandanywhere to follow a human leader when heis doing something contrary to our under-standing of Scripture. Even children are toldto obey their parents “in the Lord” (Eph 6:1).Now if we try to twist the meaning ofScripture to suit what we want to do, webring judgment upon ourselves (2Pet3:16). But if we are obeying the Eternal inreal faith, we do not have to worry what mentell us (Rom 14:23, Acts 5:29).

—NSE

Question on 1John 2:27LETTER: Sept. 7, 1997Pam and Norm,

I have a question about 1John 2:27.Recently I heard a minister (whom we allregard highly) in a sermon explain 1John2:27 as “no need to be taught by anyoneother than those who are of the body ofChrist and of the same spirit. There obvi-ously is a need for us to teach each other.”

Is this what this verse says to you? Tome it says that the Holy Spirit will teach meall things, and is truth.

Am I missing the understanding of thescripture?

—DW, OhioRESPONSE: The verse confuses many

people. Some think it says that no believerever needs to listen to any teacher becausethey will be taught everything they need toknow directly by the Holy Spirit. Otherslook at this scripture, then immediately showthe other scriptures about the need to assem-ble together, the need for teachers in Christ’sbody, etc. They use the overwhelming evi-dence of the many other scriptures aboutteaching to sort of dismiss this scripture. Thebest way to understand this scripture is toread it in context. We offer the following

excerpt from 1John 2:18 Little children, it is the last hour;

and as you have heard that the Antichristis coming, even now many antichristshave come,by which we know that it isthe last hour. 19They went out from us,but they were not of us; for if they hadbeen of us, they would have continuedwith us; but they went out that they mightbe made manifest, that none of themwere of us. 20But you have an anointingfrom the Holy One, and you know allthings. 21I have not written to youbecause you do not know the truth, butbecause you know it,and that no lie is ofthe truth. 26 These things I have written toyou concerning those who try todeceive you.27 But the anointing whichyou have received from Him abides inyou, and you do not need that anyoneteach you; but as the same anointingteaches you concerning all things, and istrue, and is not a lie, and just as it hastaught you, you will abide in Him.

John was not advising them to get rid ofall teachers, but telling them that theyshould leave false teachers. Verses 22-25give the nature of the specific heresy in ques-tion, but the overall principle here is thatbelievers with the Holy Spirit will learnmore on their own than they will from rec-ognized teachers who are teaching error.Revelation 2:2 shows that there were somewho claimed to be apostles, but were foundby the brethren to be liars. The question ourbrethren must face today is: “How do weknow when a teacher is ‘false enough’ toleave?” In this case, John was dealing withpeople who no longer taught that Jesus(Yeshua) was the Messiah. We must obvi-ously depart from people who teach or insistthat we practice major heresies like this. Butif there are no major heresies, then we needto look for works and fruits (Matt 7:15-20,2:Cor 12:12; Gal 5:22-23). We need to becareful not to simply let the teacher claimthat he has great works and fruits, but weneed to really see them!

—NSE

COG Divisions Hindering GrowthLETTER: June 6, 1998

Greetings!Would you please send me your free

subscription of Shelter in the Word.I am so pleased to find out about this

publication. I have been blessed in that Godhas been using me to “plant seeds”. Andwhile “planting” I’ve passed out many book-lets that I had accumulated over the yearsfrom CGI and UCG-AIA. The problem withthat is eventually you’re faced with explain-

ing the what, how and why of “splits”, “spin-offs” and disarray of the COG. No “spiritualBabe” should have to endure this “spiritualindigestion”!

God Bless You!—David Martel, Oregon

RESPONSE: We agree. We do notbelieve that significant evangelism will bepossible until the various Sabbatarian groupscan freely acknowledge other groups to out-siders and admit that there is very little dif-ference between themselves and others.

—NSE

The Scattering Produces BlessingsLETTER: January 10, 1998Dear Servants’ News,

Many miracles have been performedbehind the scenes bringing people togethersince the scattering of the large corporatechurches. Jesus Christ can gather his flockto Himself and to one another without meneven being aware of it.

Look at all the grass roots efforts tryingto serve others, research, study papers,newsletters, etc. Believers who left the largecorporate churches 20 years ago are com-ing out of isolation, and sharing insights andcommunications. Avenues to reach peopleare spreading out more than some realize—newsletters, tapes, videos, letters, semi-nars, etc. We all have the same goal: togrow in the maturity of Christ.

John 17:20: “I do not pray for thesealone, but also for those who will believe inMe through their word”.

Their word is still going out. The Biblehas recorded the words of the apostles andtheir eyewitness accounts. Let’s not limit“those who will believe”. Let’s leave that toour Creator.

While some groups are isolated bychoice, it is unfair to say that all the inde-pendent groups are uninterested in cooper-ation. Actually, there is much communica-tion between the interdependent groups,and I find it amazing the similar growth pat-terns and beliefs of the many scattered whohave never even heard of one another. Let’spraise Jesus Christ who is keeping tabs onall of it and guiding the whole process!

—MichiganRESPONSE: Amen!

—NSE

What are the Nephilim (Giants)?LETTER: June 11, 1998

What is your answer to Genesis 6regarding the Nephilim (giants). Some peo-ple, like Dankenbring, and others are pur-porting this is the answer to our UFO’s and

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other problems. What is your answer to this.Can demons take on human form like

their angelic counterparts and repopulatethemselves with females? Or is thisabsolutely preposterous?

—James P., e-mailThere are many scriptures, and we have

written many articles about how we will bejudged for what we do in this life. We cannotthink of any scriptures that indicate we willbe judged on knowing the answers to thesekinds of questions. While the scriptures dosay “my people are destroyed for lack ofknowledge”, we cannot think of one personwho has suffered for lack of this kind ofknowledge. (If you, or any of our readersknow of someone who suffered or perishedbecause he did not know about theNephilim, please let us know.)

On the other hand, we can think of manypeople whose lives deteriorated because theyspent much time studying such issues whentheir own lives, or the lives of their familiesand friends, were in desperate need of realspiritual help.

Nevertheless, we are told to live by“every word that proceeds from the mouth ofGod”, so we should not ignore this scripture.But do we want an answer out of the mouthof God, or do we just want an answer?

The Hebrew “Nephilim” appears in Gen6:4 and Numbers 13:33, and is translated“giants” in the KJV and NKJV. Most mod-ern Bible versions simply say “Nephilim” asthe meaning of the word is not certain.However, “giants” seems to be a reasonabletranslation, as Numbers 13:32-33 makes itclear that these people were taller. However,the comparison made by the Israelites ofthemselves as grasshoppers in their sight isclearly an exaggeration—a person is 50 to100 times taller than a grass-hopper—therewere never any people that were hundreds offeet tall.

All I really know about these verses iswhat the Bible says. The Nephilim were“mighty men” and that they were tall. Doesthe expression “sons of God” refer to somekind of spirit being? This exact Hebrewphrase is used in Genesis 6:2,4 and Job 1:6and 2:1). In Job, it definitely appears to bereferring to spirit beings. However, there arevery similar expressions found elsewhere:

You [the Israelites] are sons of theLORD your God... (Deut 14:1, RSV orNASB).

...Bring My [the Eternal’s] sons fromafar, And My daughters from the ends ofthe earth (Isa 43:6).

Yet the number of the children ofIsrael Shall be as the sand of the sea,Which cannot be measured or num-bered. And it shall come to pass In the

place where it was said to them, “You arenot My people,” There it shall be said tothem, “You are sons of the living God”(Hos 1:10).

From studying the language of Genesis6:4, I think it is possible that it refers to spir-it beings, but from studying the meaning ofthe rest of the Bible, it seems like they weremen—the Bible gives no clear explanationof a race or group of people that are partlyspirit beings. On the other hand, the Bibledoes not clearly state that such a thing isimpossible. The three verses above indicatethat the “sons of God” might refer to peoplewho followed the Eternal—so the “daugh-ters of men” might refer to people who didnot. But in all of this, if the Word of theEternal does not clearly say, then we do notclearly know.

To speculate about such things is largelyharmless. To make dogmatic statementsabout UFOs or half-human/half-demoncreatures without clear Biblical proof or arevelation from the Eternal is a big mistake.Nevertheless, religious teachers through theages have gained followings by claiming tounderstand difficult scriptures—even thoughthere was no way to prove that their inter-pretation was correct. Some will also citeapocryphal books that claim to explain theseevents, but these same apocryphal bookscontain statements clearly in opposition tothe Bible and almost no one accepts them astotally reliable.

If it were important to me to understandexactly who these “sons of God” were, Iwould pray, fast, and seek an answer fromthe Eternal. But I do not think I will do it anytime soon. There are too many other pressingneeds to ask about. I feel that understandingscriptures to help the personal lives ofmyself and others are much more important.Understanding how to preach the Gospel toothers is more important. Yes, even physi-cally preparing to be ready for difficultycaused by year-2000 computer crashes ismore important.

I think your question is a reasonable one,but my “I do not know for sure” answerneeds to be considered in light of the impor-tant events facing us in the near future.

—NSE

How to Keep the Feast?LETTER: June 21, 1998Dear Mr Edwards,

Concerning the feast of tabernacles Iam really unclear on what is the right orwrong thing to do.

1. Some people in the church don’teven observe this feast, not sure why.

2. Some go to the services, but stay

close to home so they go home every night. 3. Majority will go to services and stay

in temporary dwellings for the duration. 4. Then there is those that only go on

the holy days and work the rest of the daysin between. This is so confusing to me sinceI haven’t been in the church but 3 yrs. Whatdoes the Bible say we should do?

I do know the Bible says you shall gowhere He (God) puts his name. Well whereis that? There is a Feast site everywhere! Isure would appreciate any information onthis to help me serve God the way he trulywants me to.

Thank you for all your help.—c. (e-mail)

RESPONSE: The reason you are havingsuch trouble is because the Bible is not spe-cific about how to keep the Feast, especiallywithout sacrifices and a temple.

We are told in three different places thatwe should assemble together three times ayear (Ex 23:14-17; Ex 34:22-24; Deut16:16-17). If we read other scriptures aboutwhat to do on the Feasts, we find they aremostly about how many and what kind ofanimals to sacrifice (Lev 16; 23; Num 28;29). There are commands for assemblies onmost of the holy days.

Obviously, there are specific things todo on the Passover night, we put out leavenduring the Days of Unleavened Bread andfast on the Day of Atonement. The law wasto be read at the Feast of Tabernacles everyseven years (Deut 31:10-11)—some groupstoday have actually done this latter point.Also, during the Feast of Tabernacles, theIsraelites were told to live in Sukkoth(Hebrew) which means a primitive shelter,either a tent or a lean-to.

When the Jews were sent into captivity,they began to keep the Feasts locally, with-out sacrifices. They had no great section ofscripture to guide them, they just did the bestthat they could in captivity. They built sym-bolic “Sukkoth” during the Feast ofTabernacles and ate meals in them, they didnot need a real building since they were notjourneying and did not need a place to stay.When the Jews again had a presence inIsrael, diligent Jews in the dispersion wouldtry to get to Jerusalem for a Feast wheneverthey could. Very few could afford to travelthere three times a year.

There is no long discourse about keepingthe Feasts in the New Testament, but it isclear that the believers did it and seemed tofollow the Jewish lead of meeting locally.Paul went to Jerusalem for some Feasts, buthe never encouraged other brethren to do iten masse, nor does there appear to be anyrecords of others doing it. Gentile believerswould not be welcome to take part in the

June 1998

Temple sacrifices, anyway.The Worldwide Church of God once

attempted to get their members in the USAtogether for both the Days of UnleavenedBread and the Feast of Tabernacles. As theyfound that this was nearly impossible formany brethren, they dropped their centralDays of Unleavened Bread meeting, andtended just to combine services for severallocal congregations. Pentecost was alwayshandled this way, too.

Are there clear scriptures that showGod’s people need to get together for the FallFeast but not the Spring or Summer? Arethere scriptures that prescribe our traditionalformat of fancy motels and restaurants, half-days of sermons, and half-days and nights ofentertainment? Are there verses that tell ushow far we need to leave our homes and howmany days? Are there verses that tell us howto determine where the Eternal has “placedhis name”?

The answer to all of the above questionsis “no”.

The only justification that most groupsgive for their Feast practices is “churchauthority”. Many people have a tendency tobelieve that their church group’s Feast prac-tices are “right out of the Bible”, but thatsimply is not so. Today, there are manygroups with many Feast sites, and what hap-pens at these sites varies greatly. Some sitessimply view taped messages of sermons bythe group’s one or few “top leaders”. Othershear from a variety of live speakers. Someexpect everyone to take an active part so thatall may learn. Some sites emphasize theirentertainment potential, others emphasizebringing the brethren closer in a sort of spir-itual family reunion.

Obviously, it is not sensible for each per-son to study the scripture and organize theirown feast site according to their own inter-pretation. There would be no assemblingtogether if there were as many sites asbelievers. On the other hand, there may bepeople who have the gift for organizingFeast sites, who should be doing it! So if youbelieve you should be organizing a site, do it.But if not, which site we will attend is anoth-er decision we have to make—just likewhere will we work, whom will we marry,etc. The choices are vast and we have to prayfor the Eternal’s will in our life. If He clear-ly shows us, we take His choice, and if not,we make the best decision we can.

Where has the Eternal placed his name?I once heard a big church organizationstrongly warn an independent believeragainst “going where the Eternal has notplaced his name”. I am sorry if I destroy any-one’s cherished belief, but I have talked tomany directors of Feasts for the various

church organizations and not a one of themcould remember an instance where the loca-tion of a Feast site was chosen in somemiraculous way. No city name ever miracu-lously appeared on someone’s desk or chalkboard. No one ever put a bunch of citynames in a box, drew a few out, and thenheld Feasts in those cities. As far as I know,every Feast site was always chosen by peo-ple looking for affordable, available facilitiesin a city where they believed brethren wouldwant to attend. I have never heard anyoneattempt to prove from the scripture why theyhave any more authority than anyone else to“place the Eternal’s name” somewhere. (Theonly argument ever used is one of the churchauthority of a particular organization—thattheir church has the right doctrines or the“biggest work” and therefore has the right tospeak for God in matters of Feast sites, doc-trines, ministerial control, etc. etc.)

The truth of the matter: “For where twoor three are gathered together in My name, Iam there in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20).

We hope that you will be able to choosea Feast site where you can learn as well asserve others. We hope you will try to attendas many days as you can, rather than as few.If you want to be as literal with scriptures aspossible, stay in a tent, cabin or maybe anRV? But if you are not going to do that, wesee little difference whether you stay in amotel or home. The Hebrew “Sukkoth”never seems to mean either one of those.However, it is our understanding that themain point of the Feast should be praisingthe Eternal and fellowshipping with otherbelievers. Recent history has shown us thatthe results of fall Feast-keeping have beengood. Most people look forward to it all year,and come back spiritually refreshed. A greatmany long-time friendships and marriagesof brethren have begun at the Feast.

Have a wonderful Feast this year!—NSE

Feasts Should Be Kept LocallyLETTER: November 30, 1997Dear Norman and all at SN:

I came across this paper that I scribbledsome thoughts on probably a year ago. It isincomplete no doubt but, I think the 2 pointsI bring out are important and should belooked at/thought about. I believe the earlychurches kept all the Feasts in their localareas. I believe the Bible proves this. TheChurches today continue a practice Mr.Armstrong instituted—not God. It doesn’tmake sense to travel out of our local areasfor Tabernacles, but not for UB andPentecost. Either we pilgrimage for all threeor keep them all locally.

And I know point 2 is a hard one for theChurches of God (Armstrongites) to swallowbut I believe the Bible proves that Christcomes for his own on Pentecost and that wereturn with him when he comes to claim HisKingdom. Of course we don’t sit aroundheaven forever on clouds like so manyprotestants believe but scriptures inRevelation show the saints in heaven andreturning with Christ. (at least some of thefirstfruits). The Protestants have some goodideas and some bad. The Kingdom definite-ly comes to earth though.

I would very much like these points to bebrought out in SN and would like to knowwhat others think.

[Copy of attached paper follows]I have been thinking about the Holy

Days for quite some time now and wouldlike to share my thoughts with the brethren.

The Days of Unleavened Bread,Pentecost and Feast of Tabernacles were“all” pilgrimage Feasts to Jerusalem.Passover/Unleavened Bread was 8 dayslong the same as Tabernacles. People did-n’t journey all the way to Jerusalem, stay forPassover and the first high day, then journeyhome only to come back for the last Highday. Christ told the Samaritan woman (John4:21-23) that a time was coming (70 AD)and has now come when true worshipperswould not worship in Jerusalem but in spiritand in truth.

If Passover\Unleavened Bread andPentecost can be kept in local church areasthen so can the Feast of Tabernacles.According to Acts 20:6, Paul, Luke andsome others sailed from “Philippi” after theDays of Unleavened Bread, therefore theymust not have been in Jerusalem althoughthe temple worship was still there. Paul saysin Galatians 1:18 that he didn’t go up toJerusalem until 3 years after his conversionand in Gal 2:1 he says he went up again toJerusalem 14 years after that. When Christsaid, “a time is coming and now is…” hemeant in 70 AD the temple worship wouldbe taken away from the Jews, but it wasalready eliminated for true believers. If oneis a pilgrimage Feast then so are the othertwo. If two can be kept locally then so canthe third. In the past, in the WCG, I don’tthink we ever kept the true meaning of theHoly Days and especially Tabernacles. Idon’t think God meant for us to get used toliving like Kings. The temporary dwellingsremind us that we are strangers here andwe look forward to the city with foundations(Hebrews 11:10-16).

Also, Pentecost is the “harvest” of first-fruits. The Church of God people are first-fruits and I believe we will be harvestedthen. John 14:2-3, Revelation 14:14-16.

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When Christ returns to Jerusalem, (on theFeast of Trumpets?) we will be with Him.The saints come out of heaven with Christ.Rev 17:14 ; 19:14. Rev 18:20 and 12:10-12.Some are not appointed to suffer wrath, butare kept from the hour of trial that comes—others do have to suffer but overcome theBeast and his mark through death. “Watchand pray always that you may be countedworthy to escape these things.” Christcomes in 2 stages at His second coming. Asa thief for those who are watching and pray-ing. No one but Christ’s own saw Him departon the Mount of Olives after his resurrectionand He will come in like manner, yet He willalso come in power and glory finally when allwill see Him. Just as Christ’s 2 “advents”were blended in prophecy, so no one under-stood how he could come as the humbleservant and die for us yet also come as Kingas Kings etc. So His final return is in 2stages that are blended in prophecy so asnot to be easily understood. Christ goes toprepare a place for those who are countedworthy to escape yet there are many of usthat will have to undergo a more severe trialduring the Beast’s reign before we arecounted worthy yet will persevere and gaineternal life as well. Luke 17:26-37. The dayNoah entered the ark…sudden destruction!The day Lot left Sodom…sudden destruc-tion! I Thes 5:3-4 (on them) 9. The Day ofthe Lord is a long day-1000 years and manythings occurs at different times on that Day.Noah wasn’t surprised and neither was Lot.Nor will be those counted worthy to escape.Christ will come for them. Matt 24:36-42, 44.Also Matt 24:15-17 and Luke 17:30-31.Compare these with Zech 14:4-5 If Christ isreturning in power and glory at this time,who if fleeing? We should be free and rejoic-ing—but He is just returning in like manneras He left—only those ready will see Himand go with Him, those in Judea will flee tothe mountains made possible by the greatearthquake that occurs. The Beast will setup the abomination of desolation Rev 12:10-12. Some of the firstfruits go to heaven.Satan is cast out—no longer able to accuse.They overcome him by their steadfastfaith—the blood of the Lamb (Christ’s sacri-fice) Rev 15:1-2. Later after the Beast’sreign and battle of Armageddon, those vic-torious over the mark, because they diedrather than take the mark. I believe the Bibleshows the resurrection to be in more thanone stage as well.

No one has even talked about to anyextent let alone explained…Luke 17:26-27,Matt 24:15-17, 36-44 and Luke 21:20-24, 36and Mark 13:14-15. Just as Noah and Lotwere righteous and saved by God/angelsdirectly from sudden destruction, so will

some brethren. When the abominationcomes—will be a momentous time—muchwill be happening and many will begin tounderstand. The 2 witnesses will be preach-ing during the Beast’s reign.

Sincerely,—Jean Colgrove, Montana

RESPONSE: I agree with you that theearly apostles and brethren did not alwayskeep the Feast in Jerusalem every year. Asfar as I know, there was no Jewish traditionof getting together in regional areas—theyeither went to Jerusalem or stayed home. Ifthe apostles implemented something radical-ly different, we would expect to find some-thing of it in the New Testament. We reallydo not know what they did, but we do knowthat there is no command for any kind ofregional Feast gathering.

We also do not see any command in theNew Testament to pay tithes other than to theLevites (for more details, write for our paperHow Do We Give to the Eternal?). There isno mention of saving “second tithe” for theFeasts. It is almost inconceivable that firstcentury brethren would be saving 10% oftheir earnings to keep the Feasts locally. Asyou say, the temporary dwellings of the OldTestament were not the “live like kings”image that the WCG promoted.

Nevertheless the spiritual fruit of Feastshas been good—and is even more so nowthat brethren are even more scattered thanthey were in the past. Many independentcongregations now make an effort to gettogether for some of the Spring Holy daysand Pentecost as well.

Can everyone get away from their jobfor all of these holy days? Does everyonehave the faith to tell their boss that they aregoing no matter what, and then come back tosee if their job is still there? Does anyonehave the right to judge others in these mat-ters? I think the answers to all of these ques-tions is “No.” But if anyone’s approach to hisor her Christian life is “what is the least thatI have to do to obtain salvation”, I think thatperson is in serious trouble. If anyone thinksthat they are going to be saved because theyhave gone to the Feast every year for 30years, I think they are in trouble, also. Weshould make an effort to make the most ofevery Feast day, because we want to learnfrom the Eternal on those days, not becauseit is some kind of work that will earn us sal-vation. The Eternal knows whether we aretrying to keephis Feasts, or trying to avoidhis Feasts in a world that often makes theirkeeping rather difficult.

The sacrifices and temple rituals aregone. But the assembling together, therejoicing before God, and the building offriendships that occurred during the Old

Testament Feasts can also occur during ourFeasts today. “Therefore let us keep the feast,not with old leaven, nor with the leaven ofmalice and wickedness, but with the unleav-ened bread of sincerity and truth” (1Cor 5:8).

In regard to your second point, yourspeculation about the return of Christ onPentecost, I must say that I do not know forsure. I believe it is a subject well worthstudying.. Your idea that the saints mayspend some time in heaven is probably for-eign to most of our readers. However, mostpeople who believe that the righteous go toheaven use these scriptures in Revelation toprove it. Obviously, there are many scrip-tures that say things similar to ”the deadknow nothing.” But the possibility thatsome converted brethren will spend somelimited time in heaven may satisfy all of thescriptures. Nevertheless, I have not studiedthe matter at length, nor have I received anydivine revelation on the subject.

—NSE

Resurrections, New Moon CalendarLETTER: September 15, 1997Greetings Archie Faul & Norman Edwards,

Thank you for sending me the“Servants’ News”. I look forward to them,and I have found as long as we listen to allour brethren from the break off of the WCG,we put all our studies together, instead ofcondemning each other for being in differentso called groups. (We all have the samefoundation beliefs). We can learn moremuch faster, even as the world did whenthey were able to understand each other allover the world. They went from horse andbuggy to space age in about fifty years.

Your article “Feast ofTabernacles…What does it symbolize?”You did not say where you felt the dry bonescame in… These bones are dry, very dry.Breath comes into them, sinews are layedupon them, and bring flesh upon them, cov-ered them with skin, and put breath intothem, and they shall live, and know the Lord;an exceeding great army of the Eternal’speople was brought back to physical life andprophesied to, and brought into the land ofIsrael; and He will put His Spirit into them,Judah and all Israel is joined together onceagain. Under the Eternal’s rule, they will beburying Gog and all his multitude for sevenmonths. When will they be resurrected?

RESPONSE: I cannot say dogmaticallywhen this Ezekiel 37 resurrection occurs, butit would appear from Revelation 20:5 that itis after the Millennium: “But the rest of thedead did not live again until the thousandyears were finished.” We must rememberthat it is only Revelation 20 that clearly men-

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tions a 1000-yearreign of Christ. Withoutdivine inspiration, our assignment of variousOld Testament events before, during or afterthe Millennium is often guess-work.

LETTER: Why does Rev 19:10 and 22: 9say “I fell at his feet to worship and he saidunto me, see you do it not, I am thy fellowservant and of thy brethren that have thetestimony of Jesus , worship God.

22:8,9 I fell down to worship, before thefeet of the angel which showed me thesethings, then he said to me, see you do it not,for I am thy fellow servant, and of thybrethren the prophets, and of them whichkeep the sayings of this book, worship God.

RESPONSE: These scriptures should beself evident—we should not worship angels.Some people may think that this angel(Greek means “messenger”) may be Christ,and therefore Christ is not to be worshiped.But notice Revelation 5:12: “saying with aloud voice: ‘Worthy is the Lamb who wasslain To receive power and riches and wis-dom, And strength and honor and glory andblessing!’” Also, notice Philippians 2:10-11:“that at the name of Jesus every knee shouldbow, of those in heaven, and of those onearth, and of those under the earth, and thatevery tongue should confess that JesusChrist is Lord, to the glory of God theFather.”

LETTER: Wilderness: seems to bewhere we find the Eternal... it is in a sense adriving, pasture, an open field...

RESPONSE: I do not know exactly whatyou mean here.

LETTER: There is another thought...theFeast days, the Sabbaths, and New Moon,are shadows of things to come. How areNew Moons shadow of things to come?

RESPONSE: Col 2:16-17 certainly indi-cates that New Moons were a shadow ofthings to come. Certainly they foreshadowthe restoration of the lunar-month calen-dar—when everyone will know when theFeast Days occur, instead of needing a littlepocket conversion chart. It is possible thatthey foreshadow some spiritual event also,but I do not know what that would be. Wehave received many papers on new moonsbut have not had time to study them thor-oughly.

LETTER: And how in Psa 81:3, can thisNew Moon be a crescent moon? It says,blow up the trumpet (singular) in the newmoon in the time appointed on our solemnfeast day (singular).

The word for appointed in this scriptureand one other place is 3677 which is from3680 meaning a full moon and hides, con-cealed, covered. That cannot be a crescentmoon.

Why does the new Brown-Drivers

Griggs Genious Hebrew English Lexicon(page 294) say concealed behind a curtain?That is what it says about the words in thebeginnings of your months?

Why does the ones who map the sky forthe time we live by, and teach our schoolchildren that the dark moon is the newmoon?

RESPONSE: We have covered Psalm81:3 in previous answers to letters. It is apoetic verse with three expressions, but noHebrew words that tell us how theseexpressions are related—are they thesame or are they all three different? A lit-eral reading is: “Blow the ram’s horn in thenew moon, at the full moon, on the day ofour Feast.” You can blow one ram’s horn(singular) on one Feast day (singular), andblow that same ram’s horn on another Feastday (singular). The Septuagint version ofthis scripture (Psalm 80:3) says “Blow thetrumpet at the new moon, in the glorious dayof your feast.”

The Septuagint is a translation of the OldTestament from Hebrew into Greek—muchof which was completed before Christ.While there are many versions of theSeptuagint, and those versions vary muchmore greatly than the Hebrew Masoretictexts, the Septuagint is often in better agree-ment with the New Testament quotes of theOld Testament and with the Dead SeaScrolls. As you can see above, theSeptuagint says nothing about the full moonat all. Which text is right? I do not know. ButI know that if Christ is to hold me responsi-ble for keeping Feasts based on the FullMoon calendar, that He would reveal it to meeither miraculously or in his Bible.

Furthermore, it is evident that Christ andhis disciples kept the Feasts in Jerusalem atthe same time as the other Jews. If they werekeeping the full-moon calendar, and theJews were keeping a crescent- or dark-mooncalendar, their feasts would neverbe at thesame time. There is significant historicalevidence that a crescent-moon calendar wasin use during the first century.

LETTER: All I want is, what is truth, I don’twant my own way, what good is my ownway, I want to continually learn and changeto what ever is truth. Are people afraid of los-ing face? No one can lose face with truth,but they sure can by holding onto somethingonce they have proved it wrong.

Sincerely wanting to learn and go for-wards even if it means change.

—NT, MissouriRESPONSE: I, as well as many other

brethren I know, would start keeping a full-moon calendar this year if we were con-vinced that the Scriptures taught it, but mostsimply do not see Psalm 81:3 as a clear com-

mand to do so. If Psalm 81:3 said “Blow theram’s horn on the new moon which is thefull moon...” it would be different, but itdoes not say that.Those who do believethat the months start with the full moon,should observe the Feasts accordingly—wehave mentioned two full-moon Feast sitesthis year. But we should not say other peopleare not interested in truth or “just trying tosave face” because they do not understand adifficult scripture in exactly the way we do!

—NSE

New Moons Not SabbathsLETTER: March 26, 1998Norm:

A couple of interesting points on the newmoons question:

1) In Numbers 1 Moses took a militarycensus. This was on the first day of the sec-ond month, i.e., a new moon.

2) In Ezra 10:16, on the first day of thetenth month, Ezra and certain others heldcourt and rendered a legal judgement.

Looks to me like the new moons could-n’t possibly have the same force of law asthe Sabbath.

—Lenny Cacchio, MissouriRESPONSE: Thanks for this brief insight

into one of the many questions about newmoons. Most people I know who observenew moons do not regard them as Sabbaths,but a few do. Your scriptures show that theyare not the same as a Sabbath. I would beinterested in hearing any more factual con-clusions of this nature.

There is no section of scripture that com-mands individuals to keep new moons ortells exactly what to do. There are com-mands for the Priests. I know of no scripturethat says anything against keeping newmoons. There are simply references to peo-ple keeping them and we are left to studythem and attempt to determine what wasdone and why. Were they only a method ofmarking months, or was there a specific spir-itual lesson in them? Were they kept beforeMoses?

As far as I know, the only New Testamentverse about them is Col 2:16: “So let no onejudge you in food or in drink, or regarding afestival or a new moon or sabbaths.” Somesay that this is a proof that we should be keep-ing them, but to me it simply says that weshould not judge others about how or if wekeep them. We do not have any NewTestament references to people actually keep-ing them—like we do for the Sabbath andmost of the Holy Days. Obviously, though,this scripture indicates that we should notjudge people who decide to keep them.

—NSE &June 1998

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modern-day counterparts have an end-less supply of special names and mathe-matical relationships. Our Fathernever commanded us to look for thesethings as a proof of truth or to deter-mine who His servants are.

About the only place in Scripturewhere we are told to calculate a numberfrom a person’s name is in Revelation13:18: “Here is wisdom. Let him whohas understanding calculate the numberof the beast, for it is the number of aman: His number is 666.” The Biblegives much information about the errorand evil of this “beast”—we do nothave to identify him solely by calcula-tion. We are never commanded to cal-culate the number of a man’s name or tolisten to the meaning of his name todetermine if he is God’s servant. Thinkabout that! What better name could aman have than “son of Jesus”? Hecould claim to be a loyal spiritual son ofGod’s Son. That is the exact meaning ofthe name “Bar-Jesus”, but hewas a sor-cerer and false prophet (Acts 13:6).

We see nothing wrong with notingunusual occurrences in names and num-bers. But if you accept these things asproof of someone’s divine calling, you areon dangerous ground. If the person makesa prophecy, it fails, and then they ask youto believe their new prophecy, citing evenmore names and numbers as proof of theirdivine commission—then they and theirfollowers are in terrible trouble.

Take the Challenge of NumbersAre you sure that you will not be

swayed by a bunch of unbiblical nameand number nonsense? If so consider thefollowing information that appeared in arecent “church of God” magazine.

Each letter of the Hebrew and Greekalphabet has a numerical value associat-ed with it. The English alphabet doesnot. (Some English letters can be used inRoman Numerals, but there is no suchvalue for everyEnglish letter, so the sys-tem is not too useful). While it wouldmake the most sense to calculate thenumber of people’s names in the originallanguages of the Bible, that does notwork very well if a person is hoping todiscover evil about contemporaryEnglish names with no convenientHebrew or Greek equivalent. So, thearticle in this publication proposed anumbering system for the English alpha-

bet:A = 6, B = 12, C = 18, D = 24,... Z= 156.In other words, the numeric posi-tion of each letter within the alphabet ismultiplied by 6. What did this publica-tion reveal? It revealed that the follow-ing names add up to 666:

Kissinger, Santa Claus, GerryAdams, Ian Paisley, New York,Murrah bomb, Waco Texas,Auchwitz, computer, slaughter, andwitchcraft. In a later issue, someonewrote in and noted that Jim Rector alsoadded up to 666—and the publicationeditor found that significant. Jim hasbeen very ill and thanks the Eternal foreach day of continued life. Does anyonebelieve he will be the head of 10 nations?

When analyzing this system wenoticed that a number of “good” wordsadded up to 444 (three fours add up to12, the number of tribes, apostles, etc.)Words adding up to 444 include: Jesus,Messiah, Y’shua, Joshua, forgave,greater, Gospel, jewels, preacher,parables, unafraid and wiser. We alsonoted that Edwards and Bohonik (twoServants’ Newswriters) also add up to444. Is that significant?

No. It all means very little.You willnotice that the above lists sometimescontain just the last name and sometimesboth names. Sometimes the form isincomplete (“Murrah bomb” instead of“Murrah bombing,” “New York” insteadof “New York City”) Why? Because thatis the only way to get the desired result.When “numerologists” do not get theanswer they want at first, they try dif-ferent forms of the words until theyget an answer that suits them.

Furthermore, does the Bible tell us tomultiply the value of each letter by 6?What would happen if we multiplied thevalue of each letter by 5 or 7? If we mul-tiplied by 5 or 7, we would never getany word that added up to 666, because666 is not divisible by 5 or 7. By multi-plying each letter’s value by 6, we makeit 6 times more likely to end up with thenumber 666! As a matter of fact, withthe above system, the average value of aletter is 81 (add the values of all the let-ters 6 through 156 and divide by 26).That means that it is very likely that aword of about 8 letters will have a valuenear 666 (8×81=648, 8.22×81=666).Obviously, the value depends uponwhether the letters in the word are nearthe beginning or end of the alphabet, butthe chances of a long word or two short

words adding up to 666 are not remote.There are plenty of “good words”

that add up to 666 by this method, butthose that want to pretend that theirteaching is somehow inspired never tellyou about those words. For example,does it make sense that amethyst orsapphires, stones used in the NewJerusalem (Rev 21:19-20) each add upto 666? Are the following words evilbecause they add up to 666?Competent, confessing, dromedaries,explaining, handkerchiefs, honorable,grandsons, labourers, mourning,oliveyard, perfection, pictures, repen-teth, recovery, relatives, speechless?We can see that this numbering system isnot a reliable way to find “bad” things.

Similarly, 444 words are not alwaysgood. Other words that add up to 444include: abominable, accursed, bitter,bruise, craving, envies, error,Gadarenes (the place where a powerfuldemon-possessed man lived), harlot,killing, kidnaps, Lucifer, nuts, Sargon(an Assyrian King), Satan’s, traps,tempt, unbelief.

Using this kind of “numerology” issimply a trick that teachers use on unsus-pecting students. The teacher simplytries words and formulas till he getsthem to add up to something. If he doeslook for or stumble across words thatdisprove his conclusion, he typicallynever mentions them.

Take the Challenge of NamesIf you had no trouble seeing the error

in the previous system, then please readthese excerpts from a paper that MurrayHyson wrote about himself entitled:Dualities and Other Notable Occur-rences in My Life(March 27, 1996):

My mother was born in the 7thmonth of 1931. This is 100 nineteenyear cycles (per HWA).

My birth date is two days laterthan hers, just as Jesus Christreturns in two of His days (approx)from A.D. 31 (Day as a thousandyears).

I’m a FIRSTBORN—holy unto theLord. Both Mr. Armstrong and JesusChrist were also firstborn (Ex 13:2,Luke 2:23)....

I was born in the SEVENTH monthon the THIRTIETH day in 1951(19+51=70) all God’s numbers. Mr.Armstrong’s birthday was also the

�Names & Numbers� from page 1

June 1998

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7th month, on the 31st day....Born in Nova Scotia, I lived in the

area of the world’s HIGHEST tides.Water represents God’s Holy Spirit.

I was conceived on East PRINCESt. I lived in BIBLE Hill. When going onSEVEN years old, moved to SEVEN“R OYALTY” St. This street, on a hilloverlooking, Truro is off “K ING” St.and to the RIGHT.

I went to work for Michelin Tire.Tires are mounted on rims—wheelswithin the middle of wheels whichtravel in any direction—connectedwith the four cherubim (Ezk 1 & 10),one of which I am represented by.

I worked in Quality Control. Myfirst position was as a “Tester.”Before any rubber was used, sam-ples were first taken and tested todetermine if they reached an essen-tial high standard of quality. Since1990 I’ve performed this for Godthrough the items He revealed to me,only now His begotten are the onesbeing tested....

Not until a man was killed in a caraccident did I begin my new position.This to be repeated (image) for mynew position as leader....

Having considerable authority Icould, when necessary, scrap bothrubber or their products. I now haveGod’s authority, to be used righteous-ly and when necessary, to “SCRAP”people, even outside God’s Church.(Necks of my enemies!)...

The last building [I] purchasedwas 1656 Mackay St. The Floodbegan 1656 years after creation(Masoretic Text). There were only 8people saved, this building has 8units. During the Flood the wholeearth became a giant graveyard. Thisbuilding overlooks a graveyard justacross the street and was the onlybuilding I had a flood in....

The Holy Bible is DUAL (physicalthen spiritual), my ministry is DUAL tothose servants God sent in the past.Finally, my life is DUAL, those physicalthings in my past now being spiritual-ly repeated in God’s church. THREEDUALITIES—A “ SIGN!”

Finally, my name is Hyson , pro-nounced “H IGH” Son! This will be myposition (reward) in the Kingdom atthe end of my assignment, higherthan all God’s created beings in thisentire universe.

We hope none of our readers are anx-ious to run out and follow this man. Hewrote many more pages of similarthings. He has also written a 300-pagebook entitled Revelation’s Little Book.Notice the great claims of authority, withlittle or no real service—exactly theopposite of the instructions Christ gaveto his apostles (Matt 10:42-45).

The man does deserve some com-mendation for creativity. Since his birth-day differed from his mother’s by twodays, he went into the Bible and found asignificance of the number two. If hisbirthday had been 3, 4 or some othernumber of days different than his moth-er’s, I am sure that he would have foundsome other significant Bible number tomatch. If that proved too difficult, hecould have computed the number of daysusing the Hebrew or some other calendar.

Similarly, he found significance for hisbirth in 1951 (19+51=70). If he had beenborn later, what might he have claimed?

1952: 52–19=33, Christ’s age at death1953: end of HWA’s first 19-year cycle1954: 1+9+5+4=19, one 19-year cycleHopefully, we have made our point. If

we thought long enough, we could come upwith a “prophetic” formula for everyone’sbirth year. If you worked hard enough, youcould probably find spiritual analogies forevery town, city, street name, job, and dog’sname that has touched your life. But woulddoing such work make you a spiritualleader or simply a vain person in desper-ate need of learning humility?

If you understand that you would not bea spiritually special person if you wrotepages of analogies about your personal life,please understand that the same is true forothers who use such “proof” to claim thatthey are spiritual teachers. They probablyare not any closer to God than you are.

Do Not Be Deceived By Misuse ofHistory and Foreign Languages

It is fairly obvious that the previousexample is just so much human reason-ing. But a person may seem to be “aboveyou” if they talk a lot about history, cal-endars or foreign languages—especiallyif you have not studied those areas.Notice this quote from the March-April1998 issue of The Total Truth, A maga-zine of Love, Truth & Understanding:

Emer of Elliott [the name used bythe writer] was on earth in the 1961st

year of time from Yahshua, i.e. Sept

1988–Sept 1989 C.E. and was enteringhis 54th year on Kislev 1,4,5(Quartodeciman Perpetual Calendar). Iam sure that the Pope in 1582 musthave considered these things becausethe Gregorian calendar counts downtime from Abraham to Emer of Elliott.(My first name is “Clemer” and I wasborn at Elliott, West Virginia. “CL” [thefirst two letters of “Clemer”] = 150[Roman numeric value] or threeJubilees and it is three Jubilees fromAdam to 1988-89 if we count Abram,1961 as the first Jubilee of a 1960 yearSabbatical-Jubilee cycle after Adam.The 2nd Jubilee of a 1960 year cyclewould be that of Christ (MessiahYashua) and the third Jubilee of a 1960-year cycle after Adam would be that of1988-89—the time of Emer of Elliott.“CL” is 150 in Roman Numeral valueand those 2 letters have a numeralvalue of 6 symbolically (1+5+0=6). Thefirst Adam was created on 6-2 Abib.The last Adam, Christ, was born on 6-2Abib. The Icon of Christ, Emer of Elliotthas these numbers in his hame. Emeris a Hebrew word with the equivalentmeaning of Logos in the Greek lan-guage. I was born at Elliott, W. Va.Thus, I am Emer of Elliott. There is onlyone Emer: one=1, Emer=4, Elliot=7. Iam in numbers 1, 4, 7 in Hebrew andborn on 1, 4, 7 Kisleu (old calendarreckoning from Feb 26.) The concep-tion of Emer was about 6-2 Abib, 1936C.E.). Emer of Elliott in Hebrew meansWord of God’s Salvation.

If you cannot follow what the man istrying to say, do not worry. There are afew parts we were not sure about either.But if you think that this man must beright, or righteous because what he isdoing seems so complicated, you are introuble. It seems that there are falseteachings available with all possible lev-els of complexity.

But do the Scriptures teach us thatwe are suffering from a lack of technicalknowledge? No, they do not. Theyteach that people need to obey the basicprinciple of love toward God and neigh-bor, and to learn how to do that in detailfrom His word. In the case of The TotalTruth, we did not feel like we needed toread much of the publication to realizethat it would contain little of value tomost believers. The summary on thecover showed that it was completely

June 1998

devoted to obscure historical facts andproving the “authority” of its writers.The front cover summary is:

The Exodus Passover was the12th of April, 1443 B.C.?

The Time of Creation—4000 B.C.or 3896 B.C.

Adam was 8 years of age in phys-ical development at the time of cre-ation?

How the Gregorian Calendar“counts down” to the last messengerof God.

How the Sun and Moon in theircycles gives the anointed Messen-gers of God the numbers of God.

Did Jesus, Paul, or the other apostlesever give messages like these? No! Thewhole purpose of such messages is tomake people dependent on these so-called “messengers of God” for so-called“truth”. The result is a continual state ofdependence:the teachers teach and thestudents study a continual string of his-toric “things”. Some of the teachings maybe true and some not, but they are of littlevalue no matter what. The students oftenhave no way to verify what they arelearning, and once they are convincedthey are learning from “Messengers ofGod”, they usually stop trying to inde-pendently check the teaching they arereceiving. The teachers have usuallyspent so much time “proving” their ownauthority from scriptures that they actual-ly believe it themselves. The fact thatthey have just one or two followers is“confirmation from God” of their posi-tion, as they see it.

We would not write this article if itwere not for so many brethren whobecome deceived by such things.Church of God members have a tremen-dous desire to follow after “the man thatGod is working with”. But let us lookfor someone who is a servant, someonewho teaches the obvious meaning of thescripture, someone who has the fruits ofthe spirit (Gal 5:22-23), and someonewho meets the qualifications of a leader(1Tim; Tit 1). If the person claims tohave a prophecy from the Eternal, hehad better always be right.

Let us look back on our former lead-ers who made great claims for them-selves and prophecies that never came topass—let us admit that they, and we,were wrong.

—Norman EdwardsPage 28

SERVANTS� NEWS

you make it function, it will just sit theretotally useless. The term “scatterbrained”might be fitting here.

As we begin our comparative studybetween a young child and the babe inChrist, you will see many similar prob-lems as well as the same types of joy andpleasures.

Proper EnvironmentWhen raising a child it is important to

have a proper environment. The old say-ing “birds of a feather flock together”plays a vital role. A child who is broughtup in a house with continual yelling, foullanguage, fights and mental abuse, growsup with a mind-set reflecting these nega-tives, and will usually go out and findothers of like nature where he feels hewill fit in and be more comfortable.

The young believer must also seekthe proper environment. He looks at hisgoals and plans for the future, and as hebegins to examine his desires and nature,he also will be most comfortable withthose of like mind.

Proper CompanionshipProper companionship in this area is

essential. Peer pressure is stronger todaythan it has ever been. Doctors who havestudied peer pressure have noticed a sub-stantial increase in its influence even inthe first and second grades of school.

Even the mind of a Christian mustfight peer pressure sitting at home in hisown livings room where there is no oneelse around. The T.V., magazines, news-papers, and yes, even the computers, aredesigned to place stumbling blocks infront of the young Christian, if we willlet them. (Satan is the prince of thepower of the air and this includes alltypes of media.) The Christian’s mind isstarting fresh and it needs the propermaterials to begin its development.

Proper Self-controlHere’s another popular saying: “I told

that kid a thousand times.” The mind willautomatically revert back to where it iscomfortable and will allow itself to getaway with whatever it can. It takes deter-mination and discipline to control it.Many times, the Christian will make thesame mistakes over and over again sim-ply out of habit until the problem is final-ly overcome. And even after one battle isovercome, the mind goes on fighting.

Thoughts keep popping up like: “Goahead, nobody’s looking” or “Just onemore can’t hurt” or “Just one last timeand I’ll stop.” This spiritual battle ismuch more difficult than the physicalbattle ever was. The mind has become socomfortable in its own environment thatit retaliates whenever subjected to a newenvironment, just like the child who istaken from one home and placed inanother home.

The newborn Christian’s mind is inthe same position as a newborn infant: itmust start at the beginning to learn, stepby step. However, there is one major dif-ference between the two. The Christiangenerally has had years of misinforma-tion which must be reprogrammed intoits proper order, and this is a difficult andoften painful process. When theChristian is baptized, the old man isburied, he comes up out of the waterclean and fresh, without sin, just like thebaby who has just come out of his moth-er’s womb into the world.

Now that the foundation has beenlaid the growing period begins. It takesdiscipline. Notice when a child isallowed to do anything, he becomes wildand unruly, he eventually becomes hos-tile and attempts to rule his parents.Many succeed in these attempts and con-trol the parents. The stronger the will, themore difficult the fight. The mind of theChristian is no different; unless it is putinto subjection it will eventually retaliatefrom the abrupt change at baptism andrevert to its prior state. Even though thechange has taken place, the mind willchoose to have its own way. The old say-ing “He’s losing his mind” holds a greatdeal of truth in dealing with the spiritualbattle in the mind of the believer. Themental institutions are full of people whohave lost control. Thousands of otherswho have lost control commit suicideevery year. Keep the mind in subjection.Don’t allow it it have its own way andthrow its temper tantrums.

Discipline Your MindBegin with a daily mental exercise

program. Exercise is vital to the develop-ment of a child. It keeps the body activeand the blood flowing to the brain tokeep it active. Find a subject of interest;the Bible is just loaded with thousands ofinteresting subjects. Now remember, themind by nature is basically lazy, so whenyou read something, the mind says,

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“That’s interesting” and is ready to go onto something else. Make it stay there, letit earn its keep, make it probe the subjectand not just accept it at face value. Proveit out, research the subject, ask lots ofquestions, find other information relatedto the subject. Study to show yourselfapproved to God, rightly dividing theword of truth (2Tim 2:15, KJV).

Here is another popular saying thatfits here: “If you don’t use it, you’ll loseit.” The mind is the finest and most pow-erful part of the body, so why not makeit work for its room and board? Anotherapplicable saying is: “If you don’t work,you don’t eat.” If the mind isn’t activelyworking and probing, it won’t be eatinganything and eventually will die of mal-nutrition. Stretch the mind. It actuallyenjoys learning new things, probing newfrontiers or even just expanding the oldfrontiers. Christians become the sameway. The mind, if given the propernudge, enjoys creating things and learn-ing about new and exciting areas. Justwatch a child’s face the next time shecomes to you with something she hasjust accomplished.

Have you ever observed a childwatching a magician? Their curiosityoverwhelms them. But soon, the mindbegins to work and the inevitable ques-tion pops up: “How did he do that?” It’ssomething new; the magic doesn’t seemto conform to the laws which govern thechild’s mind. He wants to prove out whathe has just seen. The babe in Christ mustdo the same thing. As he learns new sub-jects, he is just overwhelmed and excit-ed. He must learn to do as the child andask questions.

Laughter and RestAnother major area of development

for both child and the mind which isoften overlooked in our spiritual devel-opment is laughter and rest. There is atime and place for everything, includingrest and humor. Pass by a grade schoolduring lunch or recess and you can hearchildren running, screaming and laugh-ing a block away.

The educators understood long agothe importance of proper rest and relax-ation. Make a child study and work andpractice all day long and he will becomestunted in many areas of his life. He canbecome dull and bitter, lose his sense ofhumor and eventually strike out at oth-ers. If you search, you will find that most

children who are termed “trouble mak-ers” have lost touch with a sense ofhumor.

The same holds true for the Christianmind. It needs to laugh. Laughter is anecessary ingredient for spiritualgrowth. It stimulates the blood and acti-vates the mind and when this simpleprocess takes place the mind rests and istemporarily relieved of the burdens it isunder.

MeditationLaughter and rest open another door

essential for spiritual growth and this ismeditation—taking time to think aboutthings that are important in your life. It ismuch easier for the mind to meditatewhen it is relaxed and happy. Find aplace where the mind can be put at rest,somewhere quiet and peaceful.

The mind can really be productive ifnurtured properly. During a meditationperiod the mind canreach out andexplore the regionsof your thoughts,develop ideas andeven create newtechnology. Theonly limits it has isthe limits we place on it ourselves.Remember, with God all things are possi-ble.

By what method does the child learnto meditate? Most begin with daydream-ing. Don’t stop the child from day-dreaming as these dreams can help initi-ate him into future meditation. The day-dreams simply need to be channeled intothe proper direction. The babe in Christis no different. He or she needs to spendtime reading about the characters in theBible and dreaming that he or she toowill be like them: withstanding fiery tri-als, walking through the den of lions orovercoming some other major challenge.

Meditate on the things that are proper,good, just and honest. Be merciful in yourthoughts about others. It is also importantto be able to be merciful and forgiveyourself for something you may havedone wrong. Don’t spend the time con-stantly kicking yourself. Admit the wrong,ask for forgiveness and go with life.

Keep the mind in check during theseperiods because, as mentioned previous-ly, it is lazy. Mediation makes it work,but if you’re not careful, right in themiddle of your meditation, it will simply

get up and wander away into some fan-tasy. Imagine how rude it would be ifsomeone would just get up and leaveduring the middle of your conversation.The undisciplined mind can do that verything. You begin thinking about onething and before you know it, ten min-utes have passed and the mind has beenon another subject for that period oftime.

Disciplining the mind is the startingpoint from which the babe in Christ canenter all the new and vast frontiers ofChristian growth.

Beware of ImpatienceOne of the biggest hazards to all

children is impatience. The mind is justlike the kid on a long trip. Every tenminutes he wants to know how muchlonger. The mind does the same thing. Itwill nag you to death, sometimes verysubtly, until it gets what it wants. In all

of the areas dis-cussed so far youwill find the mindstruggling to putthings off—pro-crastinate—or togo wanderingsomewhere. But

when the mind is being denied and toldit can’t have its way, the battle isstronger than ever. The less the mindhas been disciplined the harder the bat-tle. Have you ever seen a spoiled childwhen they are told they can’t havesomething or they have to wait? Youcan have a major temper tantrum, retal-iation supreme. The mind reacts thissame way, with some kind of tempertantrum. It tells us we will just die if wedon’t get it right away.

Start TodayRemember to follow the guidelines

of proving out all things, because theyouth’s mind is susceptible to believethings that are not true or real, just likethe magician tries to do with the chil-dren.

If you have read this and felt that youneed to work on your mind, and you willstart first thing in the morning, then youjust might need more work than you fig-ured. You have just lost the first battle ofthe mind if you: “Put off till tomorrow,what you should do today”.

—Morris C. Kerry Jr. (deceased)[submitted by Jerry Laws]

June 1998

Disciplining the mind is thestarting point from whichthe babe in Christ can enterall the new and vast fron-tiers of Christian growth.

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June 1998

Servants� News, PO Box 220, Charlotte, Michigan 48813-0220tel: 517-543-5544, fax: 517-543-8899, email: 75260.1603@Compuserve.com

Avery interesting pamphlet wasleft with me by a member of

the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) group.In it was a tabulation of all the hours of“witnessing” by the JWs worldwide ona country by country basis and a com-pilation of the global effort in “hours”.(All good JW members spend time vis-iting neighbors, preaching their groupsdoctrines in an orderly fashion.) Alsothe amount of converts to the churchwere listed as well. I took my calcula-tor and did a quick marketing analysis:

It took about 4000 hours of wit-nessing to get one new JW convert.(This group is more similar to theCOGs in both culture and belief thanmost of us would ever want to admit!)

Giving a dollar value of the witness-ing at an extremely conservative $10 anhour ($50 an hour is a typical skilledUS labor rate) we can conclude that thecost of the new convert came at a mini-mum of $40,000 in “Sweat Equity”.

I hate viewing the Work of God in abusiness sense, yet these numbers arefascinating! Back at WCG, it was tak-ing about the same amount of money inadvertising marketing to obtain onenew member. Somewhere around$40,000. So the choice for growthbecomes one of, or combination ofeither “Shoe Leather Sweat Equity” or“Buying your Equity”.

Since historically we in the COGSare unfamiliar (and I believe unwill-ing) to work with others one-on-one,

we are forced to use expensive “slickpaper” marketing, this will lead to oureventual demise as a people.

The reason is that we do not havethe economic financial asset base to beable to reproduce ourselves! Let megive you the hard facts... The COGS aredemographically much older than theywere 30 years ago. The average mem-ber is past his peak earning years and isin or heading towards retirement. Anaging and retiring ministry will add tothe economic burden of the CorporateChurches and limit the assets availablefor growth. The average “half life” ofour membership because of the oldermedian age now of our memberships isprobably less than 15 years. This meanswe have to double our membership inthe next 15 years just to stay the samesize we are now and not shrink. We arenot going to be able to do it just bythrowing money at the problem ,because the money is just not there!

Let me demonstrate this in the microeconomy of UCG. Historically it took acirculation of the PT of about 40 timesthe size of the membership in order tomaintain that size of membership andmodest growth. (In other words, it tooka circulation of 4 million PTs to have amembership of 100,000 and maintainabout 10% growth). In order for theUCG to maintain a long-term membercount of 12,000 with a 10% growth, itwill require a Good News circulation ofat least 500,000 copies! The most ambi-

tious and hopeful plans for future UCGexpansion are for just 160,000 circula-tion. This 1/3rd level circulation willprobably not make up for attrition anddeaths in the UCG!

We are an old and aging and dyingchurch! At age 40 and 34, my wife and Ifind ourselves at the “young” end of thechurch demographic today! Amazingly,just 25 years ago, men like TedArmstrong and Rod Meredith werecalled “Veterans of the Work” at thesame age as myself right now. But today,I am still considered one of the “kids”,having been baptized 23 years ago!

We must change our attitudes aboutevangelizing or we will die out! One-on-one or “belly to belly” evangelismis free and can never be shut down.Corporate overhead must be eliminat-ed and most of the ministry mustbecome unpaid. The days of comforthave ended. We must either acceptnecessary changes or watch all that wehave had disappear and die out. We asindividuals cannot afford to be shy andreticent anymore about the hope thatlies within us! We need to ask theEternal to show us effective and work-able personal evangelism techniquesand to quit hiding our lights! It is notthat hard; it worked in the first centu-ry. It can be done now in an easy-goingand friendly manner and we can reachmillions!

There is no gain without pain!—Bill Lussenheide, Menifee, California

Are Church of God Groups Long-term Sustainable?

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