Our responsibility will be laid out for us. It is just that there are three men who are going to have to function together……If you can understand what I am saying, this is what we are part of. Certainly, if I don’t go out and say what I think, judgment I think should be carried out, you can’t either. On the other hand, let’s face it—it’s enormous power and authority.

When the Two Witnesses are given power, they are told to do certain things…and the people don’t respond…boom…water turns to blood, the heavens dry up, plagues come, and if you threaten them, personally, you die by fire. They are going to make judgments. Brethren, you are going to have certain power. Understand—along with two others, it is clear then, during the restitution of all things, that God is using a human spokesman and with those two others. Therefore, this becomes its own great proof that God has always intended the Kingdom be carried out through human leadership under Christ. All of it—meaning you included.

But many brethren died in United and Living and PCG—outside the Body of Christ—outside God’s government—and they have a chance to come back and help, and some of them are going to succeed and go on to everlasting life, and some are going to fail and go on to everlasting shame and contempt. They, literally, come back—a resurrection of the dead—come back and are given a chance, a second time, to do the right thing and if they do it wrong again, they get everlasting shame and contempt. But, boy, will we need teachers!

If you are now resplendent and you are ruling cities, and your ability has been enhanced by God after you enhanced it first…and God would want to give more ability to people who tried, at the human level, to develop it…what does everybody look like? Wouldn’t God have a dress code? Would He let people dress according to cultures all over the world and they represent His government? He and angels dress in white. So does Christ. So there would be some kind of dress code. We could speculate on that, but you wouldn’t want to go too far. I could speculate it’s white…maybe it’s linen. You wouldn’t leave styles up to people—the weak of the world—do you want to leave styles up to them? I think not. You probably wouldn’t leave colors up to people, because then the government of God is represented without a dress code. 

If you are working with Maasai warriors in Africa, do you want to carry a big long staff and dress like they do? No. No, because you represent the government of God…and so forth. Greatest Story 9

Now…by the way, if you wait for everybody on Earth…the Scriptures say they will…to have their own vine and fig tree, they could maybe sing about Fig Newtons, but they had never had a fig, don’t know how to grow a fig, never seen a fig tree…don’t know how to grow a vine…so if they figured that out, or if you told them how to do it, it would take years for them to have a vine that produced…or a fig tree that would produce, unless you simply create, by divine fiat, lots of vines and fig trees, and apportion out where everybody lives. The book of Joshua shows that the various families in Israel, got inheritances. So people have to have a plot of ground they call their own with, at least, a vine and fig tree, if we can just leave it at that for the moment. So those would be inducements.

Number one, I can talk real fast like a chipmunk and try to cover all these questions faster than a normal person would talk…It’s funny. I have a television. Now, you can hit what is called “Quick Mode.” Raise your hand…Any of you heard of that? I didn’t know what that was. In an impatient age, it has the person who is speaking (the commentator, certain programs) talk faster……

Well, I could talk in “Quick Mode,” but that’s not good, that’s not natural. Number two, I could just delete elements of material and move too fast while talking at a normal rate, and then people do not understand.

The third option is to go four hours every Sabbath. I’ve already done that twice and that has problems…people with long drives, and it is also giving too much too fast, but it would move me through the kinds of questions that are coming in.  Greatest Story 10

You have a house. I have a house. God has a house—it’s called “the Temple”—but this is different. “In my Father’s residence.” These accommodations, if you want to think of it…This abode that He set up are many different mansions. It’s not talking about offices or positions. The word “mansions” means “a staying,” where to stay, and it can mean “residence,” “the place.” Now, let’s keep reading. This is fascinating…

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again…” (vs. 3).

So one of the things Christ is doing, based on how people are growing in the last generation, who rule first, He is getting ready for who lives where. He is going to tell us what we wear…It’s all taken care of. It will be the ultimate supernatural Bed and Breakfast, is really what it is, if you want to think of it that way. If you want to think of a five-star hotel, maybe you should think of a giant, 25-star hotel…that might be the best way to look at it…and that would be on people’s minds—but it wouldn’t be, if we were spirit.

You just hate him because he is the most successful of all armstrongite leaders. He started with a local congregation of 30 people, and just a few years later he's got thousands, millions of dollars, building, publications, projects, employees, audience, young wife... You write and comment on him, he doesn't even notice you;you are like grasshoppers to him. Most of you, to use a Michael Savage expression, have never ever ran even a shoeshine stand. Love him or hate him, but he's the man, a wolf not of the Wall Street but of Armstrongism.

After presenting a paper to the Doctrinal Committee on the God of the Old Testament which is  contrary to Armstrong teachings and the UCG Fundamental Beliefs, Mark has persisted in preaching that material, while it is still under Doctrinal Committee scrutiny.

Mark has departed from the long established teachings on who YHVH is, claiming that the word YHVH refers to God the Father exclusively, and Mark has been preaching his positions while his presentation is still before the Doctrinal Committee and not yet approved by either the DC, the CoE or by the 75% of elders necessary for a doctrinal change.

James:
1) have you gone through ALL of Mark’s scriptures/statements on the subject? Have you listened to all the messages that UCG members site removed? if in fact you have Mark’s complete paper….WHERE would you get this? It has not been “official” yet so any source you are getting stuff from is not “sanctioned” anyway. Why would you have this?
2) Additionally, if this subject is so easy to refute as you say…why on earth would we have to wait until next Friday. Some of us could be dead by then and never hear YOUR version! You should have had your rebuttal posted directly to mine.

Don’t look now but your attitude is showing and you are foolishly criticizing things you know nothing about

I have posted on this several times in the past, but Mark has added some new twists that must be covered. 

I am very busy doing the regular daily posts and wanted to give this story time to circulate to build up interest in the coming post; I thought this was just a fringe issue and had no idea the interest would take off as it has. 

Although a week is actually a very short time, in fairness I also wanted people to have a chance to hear what Mark is presenting before I posted, thus giving him first say so people would know what I am writing about when they see my post.

Mark’s sermons are out there for all to hear and I provided a link, you have significant proofs available that the issue exists and as for other sources – and there are other sources – that is none of your business. 

I have known of this for the past year but was just told the matter was coming to a head soon, which is why I posted on it now before the Dec 5 CoE conference.

This is MY site and I run my own operation and keep my own schedule as I see fit. Do not expect me to be so patient with this type of aggressive comment in future. James

The first great proof is we’re in the seventh, and therefore, final church era—and we are deep into it. Mr. Armstrong died 30 years ago, today, at 6:05 a.m., Pacific Time. That is a shocking statement if you think about it. We are deep into the Laodicean age. That alone would tell you—since there are not eighth or ninth eras—that we are near the end of the age.

Second, we’re at the end of 6,000 years according to just basic math…

Here is a third one…Perilous times exist today, think II Timothy 3 and verse 1, in unprecedented ways. It’s an incredibly dangerous world. Much more dangerous, frankly, right now than I thought it would be, and we are still facing a great Work that will likely last a few years. God’s Kingdom needs to come very soon…or the world is just too dangerous to continue. Well, of course, God’s Kingdom is coming very soon…But we are in perilous times by every definition, but I will explain—and powerfully prove—much later in the series why this is largely about the Church. But just realize that about every 90 minutes there is a terrorist act somewhere on Earth—every 90 minutes—and it’s rapidly accelerating……

Think about this next one: Conditions are perfect for Grace to be fulfilled. I could spend a lot of time on that; but, by now, you should understand that without much qualification. It’s a signal that we are in the end of the age—in a big way. There are all kinds of things going on in the splinters, frankly, that make me very sad. More and more senior ministers are either having strokes…Another evangelist, in one of the splinters, had a massive stroke that struck him at the base of his brain, right after he gave a sermon a week ago, and he’s probably never going to recover. I helped transition him to the Living Church of God (Actually then, it was the Global.)…I got to be very close to him.

Another senior minister in that same organization, an evangelist (at least, the way they count them) just came through radiation therapy. There are others having strokes and suddenly dropping dead. It won’t be long before there won’t be many more ministers. Now, we know that God will resurrect many of them, but that is a separate point.  Part 11

In all honesty, brethren…And I’m going to get into this more. This will not be this week, it will be next week. When the devil is cast down later, because he is going to first be removed just before Christ’s rule from Zion…I will show you all the proofs of that. I just can’t get to it, but I will and it’s next week…But when he is cast down, it says he’s angry because he knows he has but a short time. The word “short time” there actually means “puny occasion.” He is cast back to the earth and before he is thrown into the bottomless pit for a thousand years, he has this period called a “puny occasion.” Now that’s interesting. You can look up the Greek. He is very angry, partly, because he has been gone, and partly, because now that he’s back, he has a very short time……

The world is collapsing almost too fast. If you look at the stock market, it was the worst week in American history—and that was true about Wednesday morning. Yesterday, the Dow was down over 500 points at a certain point. Just in American wealth, there is 2 trillion dollars…Two trillion dollars of wealth has been lost in the United States, since the beginning of this calendar year. Then, of course, there is terrorism. There are all kinds of problems in politics. The world is collapsing in extraordinary ways, and we should be able to “behold” that. It’s everywhere……

CNN: Stunning! Dow hits new high of 19,000 as Trump rally continues

“I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands” (vs. 11). Now, this is just the number of angels around God’s throne. Looks like it’s somewhere in the neighborhood…by one way of counting…of about 150 million angels—just the ones that are there.

Christ travels with 20,000 angels, so…I don’t know how many others there are. There is another way to look at this. The Greek may actually mean…Now, this will be hugely important later…may actually mean there are 100 million. “Ten thousand times ten thousand” is obviously 100 million but it’s 100 million times thousands and thousands. The Greek suggests…frankly, strongly…that’s a more correct way to look at it. So it’s vast, vast billions of angels, exist. Now, just file that. It will be bigger later on.

“Sex has never been ordained by God,” he began. “In fact, it was the first sin, Adam and Eve and the serpent. And you see what happened to the serpent on that. But, like I say, sex is the problem. If you don’t mention sex, two men or two women can live together, share a place, have a place, and one can leave whatever she got, and they can have a ‘merge partner,’ they call it.”

Continuing on with his line of thought, the man said, “Sex, I think, well, sex is the biggest, the most reason, well, all the homeless, abused children in the world is because of sex. And 99.9 percent, I guess there’s been a few [intelligable] that was because of money then. But money and sex is the two worst things out there and sex is a mighty big one.”

There may however be a rational explanation to the dramatic outburst. The American Psychological Association defines Erotophobia as a fear of sex. This could be a good explanation as to why the man of cloth would go as far as exaggerating statistics about homelessness when in actual fact, 47,000 of the homeless population in the US are veterans.  Theos Watch

I think of the lecture series I'm preparing for the ministerial meeting coming up in a couple of weeks. And we have Garth coming over from New Zealand and Wayne from Australia, and Chris. And then, of course, Willem, Audra, and Jeremy all coming in, as well as all the senior elders here in the U.S. and my wife and I. It's the first one we've had since 2011 where everyone was able to come in together like that. And so as I've been preparing some of that been very sobered by going back and looking at some of the statistics of things that have happened throughout a long period of time here and seeing the different ministers who have gone by the wayside, considering the numbers of people in the Church who continue to go by the wayside, and I think back at the time of Mr. Armstrong and seeing some of those ripples take place, as we're getting ready to talk about even here in what is covered in this section of the book, and it is a very sobering thing. But since the Apostasy far more obviously, and the things that we've gone through are on an incredible scale of a magnitude of a story flow that will be in history and in time that is quite astounding.

A lot of people that I never would have dreamed of that have gone by the wayside over the last 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years is quite amazing; individuals that I just wouldn't have thought it of. 

That's always been an admonition to God's people, but especially now as we're drawing closer and closer to the very end, and because of the pulls of this world, because of technology and those things there are pulls upon people's lives, there are pressures in people's lives in a manner, in a way that never existed in God's Church in the past 2,000 years! In the last 20 and 30 years that has changed dramatically! And it's had an incredible impact on God's people because it's powerful, what we're dealing with out there in this world. And there is a lot of pressure and a lot of stress in society in the world. And you see this more and more. Incredible what's taking place out there before our very eyes. 

So again, the fact that you're here, the message from God is be encouraged and keep fighting. Keep fighting! Because you have to fight this all the way to the end and you can't do it halfway. We still have a few... still have a few that are kind of doing it halfway. Brethren, we have got to be in God's Church, in the Body of Christ, living our lives in the Father and the Son on a spiritual plane and them in us. And if we continue in sin, if we're not genuine to the core of our being God will bring those things to the surface. This is a time we must be genuine, we must be true, we must be worshipping God in spirit and in truth. And those weaknesses that we have in our life and the baggage we've been dragging along, it has to stop. We have to get a hold of those things, get a grip on those things in our life and fight like we've never fought! We're in the final stretch. 

And you should note…We haven’t proven yet that this is when Christ is reigning in Zion, but we will…it has sort of thrown some pretty heavy hints out there that these are a people who have been crowned, and they have glory and honor—exactly as they do in Psalm 149 when they are leading the most powerful people on Earth and they have power to imprison them…You will find, as we go further…Not this week…the power to execute people…and I will show you that you’ll never get a single decision wrong, because that becomes a question. Well, could we ever get anything wrong? I will give you five proofs that it’s impossible to get anything wrong—when we get to that.

But, to minister to or to minister for…Live by the sword and perish by it—live by the sword and perish with it. I thought, “I had better double check. I want to see.” The word “to” is the preposition eis; e-i-s, pronounced like “ice” cold. “For” is dia [dē-ä]. It is a different word, and it means “on behalf,” “for,” “causatively.” It is not speaking of them ministering to you, it is speaking of them ministering for you! These awesome, powerful beings in great numbers.

Now let’s talk about them for a minute. Seven of them act as Christ’s eyes across the world. Four of them are going to effect the death of over two billion people. One took 72,000 lives, until it was stopped at Araunah’s threshing floor. They can travel at the speed of thought—shooop!—that’s a lot faster than that. It takes about an eighth of a second for light to travel around the earth—about an eighth of a second. So if you are traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, you can get anywhere on Earth in about a 17^th of a second. Angels can move at the speed of thought. Seven of them will pour out the trumpet plagues that affect the entire Earth. Seven more, will pour out the seven last plagues. One angel, on God’s behalf, brought the book of Revelation to John, and he was so awesome, that a 100-year-old man—who knew better—started to worship him, and he said, “Stop. Stop. I’m your fellow servant.”

They are such awesome, amazing beings. Now God is way above them, we just saw that. Christ is made way better than they are. When He came back from the dead, Christ was now made, and He was way better than they were. Once He died, God had to bring Him back and make Him a member of His family again, and He was made much better than the angels. They can pass two buses right through each other. They can do battle with the devil and win. They are incredible beings!

We just talked about them, and how God is going to use them, hundreds of millions of them—billions maybe—to assist you. Do you think you’re going to need a bureaucratic pile-up all around you, train wrecking and choking everything in red tape? Absolutely not! If you told an angel…Before you even find out the power that God is going to give you, if you told an angel: “Get that king!”—shooop ‒ shooop—he’s back. “Bind him!”—Bang! You could do it yourself. I’ll show you, you’ll have the ability to do it yourself, or angels could do it on your behalf. That’s how billions of people come into subjection…but you have to come to grips with that verse. 

I don’t know how two angels could stand on either side of the Garden of Eden for 1,600 plus years with two swords turning every which way. I can’t fathom the sheer awesome brilliance of angels. Yes, I know they’re way below God. That is not what we are talking about. But how human beings—I—you—any of us—could be thought of as a little below angels, was always difficult to understand, until I read this correctly.

Today is national holiday in the USA called Thanksgiving. And despite certain claims, its specific origins are not pagan. But, of course, no Christian needs to celebrate national holidays like it. And the Bible does condemn gluttony.

One thing that I have noticed on the day called Thanksgiving by those in the USA, is when I have been at many other places than the home I lived in, American football has been playing on television. 

For many, other than food and family, football is a major focus of the Thanksgiving holiday.

When I was posting a video on YouTube several weeks ago on giving thanks (watch Ingratitude and Giving Thanks), apparently because it mentioned ‘giving thanks, YouTube suggested that a ‘key word’ for the video should be ‘American football’ (which was not in the description).

While I have even heard some people thank God for football, it is not a sport that I believe that the God of love would condone.

The person that Jesus stated was greater than all others born of women (Matthew 11:11), John the Baptist taught:

14 Do violence to no man (Luke 3:14, KJV)

What do sports like American football and boxing do? They harm people. Even if played according to all of its rules, American tackle football is evil because it actually physically harms many its participants...

The truth about the harm the sport causes is something that professing Christians, and others, who think that they should watch American football should think about. 

We must remove every sin and every pagan blot on our garments to prepare for the marriage of the Lamb. 

The traditions of the Protestants including Puritans and Anglicans came mainly from Roman Catholicism, the Roman Catholic church is the ancient Babylonian Mysteries traditions were adopted from paganism. 

Sunday, Easter and even Thanksgiving are very ancient pagan holy days.

Actually the harvest feast was well known by these Indians and was a tradition practiced throughout the new world, as well as the old by the pagans. Thanksgiving is a universal pagan tradition descended and spread from Babel worldwide. Some of whom paid homage for the harvest by sacrificing young virgins.

Is it wrong to be thankful? NO, Definitely NOT!

It IS wrong to cloak pagan traditions in the guise of being thankful to the true God. That is what Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving are all about; cloaking rank paganism in an appearance of something good; of making evil seem desirable, godly and good: Of deceiving people into sinning by exalting the pagan pantheon under the illusion and false cloak of pleasing the true God! 

The big question is: To whom are you being thankful? To some pagan god and traditions; or to the Eternal Creator who has given us his own Holy Days to rejoice and be thankful on?

We tend to think of Thanksgiving Day starting in the New World. But actually a thanksgiving for the annual harvest is one of the oldest holidays known to mankind, though celebrated on slightly [due to differences in climate and harvest dates] different dates. In Chaldea, in ancient Egypt and in Greece, the harvest festival was celebrated with great rejoicing. The Hindus and the Chinese observe the gathered harvest with a holiday.” 

The first two Thanksgivings in the present day United States [Another was an Anglican service in Canada] were Roman Catholic. The Pilgrims can only claim a third one, a correction I suggest should be made in school history books.

The first Thanksgiving’s in the US were celebrated by Spanish explorers, not pilgrims. It is Florida that today proudly claims the first Thanksgiving, with a feast and celebration between the Spanish and Timucuan Indians on September 8, 1565, 56 years before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth in 1621. Therefore, St. Augustine – and not Jamestown – is the first permanent European settlement and oldest city in North America. Another correction for many history books.

Now what could some of the things you’re eating on Thanksgiving symbolized?(For all Our Kitchen Witches Out there!!!!)Turkey-– Native Americans–symbolized the Mother Earth and a shared Harvest.Apples–Celts–rebirth, healing and youthPumpkins--Native American– was symbolic of personalized power (in some cultures) and symbolized the sun.Wishing you a Merry Pagan Thanksgiving!

God’s Thanksgiving is the Fall Harvest Festival of the Feast of Tabernacles!