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Self-portrait of the artist

For the fun of it this time I put myself in this cartoon [see it on page 3]. I still give a sermon once in a while, even though I'm in my 90th year.

Earl Cayton

San Francisco, Calif.

Timing of the Passover

This is not meant to be the final answer or to cause contention, but everyone needs to know why some observe dates for holy days different from most in the seventh-day Churches of God.

  • Jesus kept the Passover at the prescribed time (Mark 14:12). The lamb was killed on the 14th before dark.

The next morning was the 15th, a holy convocation, the first of seven consecutive days of unleavened bread (Exodus 12:18-20) from the 14th at evening through the 21st at evening, totaling seven nights and seven days.

There is no day between Passover and the 15th. Passover is the Night to Be Remembered.

Jesus observed the Passover at the right time, but the Jews had modified the calendar and did not keep Passover until later, called "Passover of the Jews" (John 11:55).

  • The Jews were preparing for their Passover when Jesus was crucified (John 19:14).

The day came to be reckoned by the Jews as beginning in the evening. But God called the light "day" and the darkness "night."

Jesus said there are 12 hours in the day. That leaves 12 hours of night. Today we refer to the day as being 24 hours, the whole calendar date, and start our date change at midnight even though it should be in the morning.

The Sabbath begins in the morning. God said to keep the Sabbath day holy, not the night.

Genesis 3:5 is translated to make it seem that the day begins in the evening, but there was no punctuation in the Hebrew. Some translations say "evening passed and morning came -- that was the first day."

 

After understanding that a biblical day is the light portion of the calendar date, I have noticed how all the holy days and Passover are in sync.

Duane Giles

Palestine, Texas

For another view of the timing of Passover, see Daniel Botha's essay beginning on page 4 of this issue of The Journal.

Ex-gay ministries

Recently Lonnie C. Hendrix made a purportedly scriptural case for gay marriage. [See his articles in issues No. 155, September-October 2013, and No. 157, Dec. 31, 2013.]

However, his argument flies in the face of both the positive ethic for heterosexual marriage and the generic prohibitions on homosexual sex in the Bible.

The Bible always describes marriage in a positive, heterosexual manner, never generically as if the gender identity of the partners didn't matter.

"For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 3:24).

It's not merely that a set of texts can be quoted that condemn homosexual relationships under all circumstances. It's also because no positive mention of gay sex appears under any circumstances in Scripture.

For this reason "gay marriage" is intrinsically as absurd as a square circle or a married bachelor.

Although it's claimed that being gay is an immutable characteristic, like skin color or gender, this claim has long since been empirically falsified by ex-gay ministries such as Exodus International and the reparative therapy work of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi.

Even the rigidly secular Kinsey Institute in 1970 reported that 84 percent of homosexuals they studied had shifted their orientation at least one time, 32 percent a second time and 13 percent five times!

In general, as Joe Dallas observes in The Gay Gospel?, what's "inborn" shouldn't be considered to be "normal," such as any number of birth defects or genetic handicaps demonstrate.

Finally, we're born into a fallen world, cut off from God (Romans 5:12). No Christian should assume that what feels good is necessarily right in God's sight under such conditions, since our evil human nature can easily deceive itself (Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 3:9-18).

Hence gay marriage is clearly the product of bad human reasoning (Proverbs 14:12).

Eric Snow

Redford, Mich.

Hate by any other name

Regarding Ellis Stewart's response in issue No. 158 ["Mr. Hendrix's Articles Shook a Lot of Us Up"] to my articles in issues No. 155 ["Ezekiel: Sins of Sodom Were Not About Sex" and No. 157 ["Writer of Article on Sex Responds to Critics"]:

Licensed ministers haven't been shy about expressing their opinions on the subject of homosexuality for as far back as I can remember.

The only thing unique about me, Lonnie Hendrix, tackling the issue was that I espoused an alternative view of the subject.

In terms of God's law, I believe that my current understanding of the topic is superior to the understanding I had as a member of the WCG.

For Christians, Jesus Christ should be the foremost authority available to us on that subject. He said the two greatest commandments were "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

To Christ and His followers, love was and is the principle behind the dos and don'ts.

Hence I fail to see how hating homosexuals fulfills the law.

We could quibble over the definition of hate, but we would be hard-pressed to characterize the traditional Christian reaction to homosexuals as love.

Many Christians have made it clear they hate homosexual behavior and find it (and them) abominable. They exclude them from church services and any chance of being in God's Kingdom and assure them they have a one-way ticket to the lake of fire.

That sure sounds like hate to me.

Christ had to keep all of the commandments, statutes, ordinances and judgments contained in the law. He did that for us, on our behalf.

By keeping all of them perfectly, Christ redeemed everyone who has accepted His sacrifice from suffering the penalty (death) that our law-breaking has incurred.

To be sure, we are still obligated (if we truly love God) to the principles behind the law. Thus we should all be seeking to exhibit the love, compassion and mercy God and Christ have so abundantly showered on all of us.

Lonnie Hendrix

Fayetteville, Ark.

Hey, singles: Alaska or Caribbean?

Who is interested in a singles-only cruise for the Feast of Tabernacles? This would be for all ages 18 and up and all Sabbath denominations.

We hope the corporates would support their members attending because all Feast offerings should be mailed in to each person's church of choice. I don't want money collected at the Feast because this is a private matter.

The hostility between Sabbath- and Feast-keeping groups is ridiculous. Join me in creating a positive individual-focused Feast site full of fellowship, Bible readings, prayer and traditional speakers.

I would like to have a list of speakers and their subject topics beforehand to make sure we don't have any fruitcakes.

Alaskan cruise or Caribbean? Ideally this would be for singles only and not couples. Young children probably would not fare well with the adult-focused activities. We need a site just for singles.

If you phone me, call only after 10 p.m. eastern or on the Sabbath between noon and 4 p.m.

June Narber

junenarber@icloud.com

Nimrod is the context

One of the most important historical and biblical facts we need to understand is the role of Nimrod (Genesis 10), the first world dictator, the founder of Babylon and the Babylonian mystery religion.

His Babylonian, pagan, satanic religion was passed on to all nations under the names of various male and female deities.

In Revelation 17:5 Christ warns us about the modern Babylonian religion: the mother church and her daughters now promulgating that Babylonian religion under the veil of ecumenism.

Beware, lest the wine of that (spiritual) fornication would get us drunk (Revelation 14:8; 17:1-2; 18:1-3).

We should not fall prey to that religion's sorceries that deceive all nations (Revelation 18:23).

Sasha Veljic

Novi Sad, Serbia

Just what do you mean One?

Deuteronomy 6:4 is known as the Shema and clarifies much about God: who He is, what He is and how we therefore should understand Him and worship Him. Here is that scripture:

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord."

God wants us to know Him in truth, and He makes that truth available to us.

In the original Hebrew, Lord in this verse means "self-existent or eternal."

So there is only One who can be reckoned and accepted as the Eternal: the One who has lived forever and has never had a beginning of days: not three who are eternal or two, but He who is Jehovah, YHVH, Yahweh, the Father. He alone has lived forever.

So there was a time in the past when the Father was the only one who existed: no angels, not 24 elders, no Christ, no Satan, nothing except YHVH. He only has lived forever.

Paul and Micki Herrmann

Metairie, La.

Somebody messed with Jesus' canon

Does anyone wonder why the Protestants took some books from the canon in the late 1800s? They were books Jesus and the apostles had in their canon. When New Testament writers spoke of the Scriptures, those books were among their Scriptures.

The removal of the books is more dramatic than one might at first think.

If you will notice, no one really believes the Bible is the Word of God. Rather, Christians conclude that someone's interpretation of one or more Bible verses is the Word of God.

Protestants deleted some of the books because they were trying to convince people they were offering all the rewards of salvation without the works of faith in their lives.

This required the redefining of the faith of Christ. Faith could no longer be something we could not see, definitively define or completely control. They needed it to become seeable in the physical world, explainable and controllable.

The church before the Protestants had redefined faith in a similar manner. Now it was the Protestants' turn to redefine the canon.

By removing books that neither the Jews nor Christians had previously dropped, they strove to establish their authority as the ones with the mantle from Christ.

When Jesus called Himself the Truth, His listeners could understand His claim in the light of 1 Esdras 4.

That chapter might change some minds as to what Jesus meant when John quotes Him saying "Before Abraham was I am." You might find it interesting to do a Google search on that chapter.

Do we really believe people are preaching the same truth if they do not know what Jesus and the apostles called Scripture?

Phillip Griffith

Delight, Ark.

Ecclesia vs. ekklesia

Regarding whether writers of English should use ecclesia or ekklesia:

Many English words came to us from Greek via Latin. Ecclesia, to me, has overtones of the Western church (primarily the Latin-based RCC); i.e., the church that has been established in the West for nearly two millennia.

The spelling ekklesia, on the other hand, suggests a going back to the roots, dispensing with the accretions the church -- and terms such as "ecclesiastical" -- has accumulated over the centuries.

Historically, Catholic countries such as France, Portugal, Spain, Italy all use a derivation of the Latin ecclesia as their word for "church" (église, igreja, iglesia, chiesa).

Traditionally Protestant countries such as England and Germany use derivations of the Greek kyriakos ("Lord's") for their terms: church and Kirche (cf. Scottish kirk).

Reginald Killingley

Big Sandy, Texas


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