Letter: September 3, 2013

Dear Brethren and co-workers in Christ:

The Feast of Trumpets begins on September 4th after sunset and we got this letter out so you would receive an update as well as suggested service for that Holy Day.

Doing the Work

We received the first draft of the Statement of Beliefs of the Continuing Church of God in the language of Kiswahili. We are attempting to figure out how to format it and place it online.

We also were told that the Statement of Beliefs of the Continuing Church of God is being translated into the language of Telugu, which is spoken in parts of India.

Our Statement is currently available online in the following languages:

We eventually also hope to have the Statement in Mandarin Chinese and other languages.

John Hickey sent me the draft of the required “Constitution” for CCOG in New Zealand, which I signed, had witnessed, and scanned back to him. So, hopefully this will help with our charitable status in New Zealand.

The Bible Hymnal

We keep working with CreateSpace (an Amazon-related company) to attempt to get a hard cover version of our new songbook out prior to the Feast of Tabernacles. Progress is being made on this, but there have been some disappointments, as it was originally supposed to be ready by now.

My wife and I had hoped to bring the hard cover version of the hymnals personally to New Zealand, but with the delays from Create Space, this remains a challenge. At this moment, it appears that while we may have some paperback copies of the song book before we depart, the hard cover copies will not arrive until about a week later, and hence we probably will not be taking them with us. You can pray about this as we would prefer to take them with us.

News Events

The situation in Syria has remained in the news (see Karl-Theodore zu Guttenberg on Syria; Israel launches missile test and John Kerry claims Syria used Sarin gas; Assad opposition disappointed in Barack Obama). Events are aligning for the ultimate destruction of its capital city Damascus (Isaiah 17:1).

On COG related news, a false ‘apostle’ who predicted various events that were supposed to happen in the past several days was proven wrong (RCG: The Real Truth), just as I predicted he would be (RCG: Can you see the ‘handwriting on the wall’? Your emperor has no clothes!). A couple of people had told me that supposedly, that false apostle (cf. 2 Corinthians 11:13) may have predicted my death to occur on August 30, 2012, which of course, did not happen.

Suggested Sabbath Service for the Feast of Trumpets

Here is our suggested format for services for this Holy Day:

2-3 hymns (our songbook, The Bible Hymnal, contains the materials from the 1974 Bible Hymnal from the old WCG with new covers, plus ten additional hymns; there also is some Choral Accompaniment online).
Opening prayer.
Offertory Sermonette: Offertory: Blow the Trumpet.
Announcements (if any; though for many it will be this letter) and one hymn.
Sermon which for most will be a recorded one titled: The Trumpet Release. There is also information related to this in the article: The Book of Life and the Feast of Trumpets?
Final hymn.
Closing prayer.

Note: If you have a slow internet connection, you can watch these by starting the video, then below it (and towards the right) look for an outline of a gear–if you click on that, it will allow the YouTube video to be played with lower video quality, but at least it will not stop often–you can select a quality as low as 144p.

If you prefer audio messages to audio-visuals ones, go to the YouTube link for the message, click on SHOW MORE related to the description. You will then see something that says, “Download MP3.” Below that is a link to an MP3 file. Most computers (and even some cellular telephones) will allow MP3 files to be downloaded and played. So, this is an option we have made available (but we are looking into ways to try to improve that as well).

Have a spiritually profitable Feast of Trumpets.

Sincerely,

Bob Thiel, Pastor and Overseer
Continuing Church of God