* LCG News *  2005 Feast of Tabernacles Sites  * Listing of Living Church of God Congregations *Sunset Times for the U.S. *  News of Those Once Affiliated with the Global COG   * Prayer Requests * Official Living Church of God What's New? page.

Click Here for the COGwriter Home Page which has articles on various sabbatarian Churches of God (COGs) and articles supporting beliefs of the Philadelphia portion of the Church of God.

03/28/06 a.m. YesterDAY, ACD's Ken Westby posted:

"Reader's Digest Religion"
Mainstream religion has largely lost the Old Testament and it shows in its confused theology. The "church fathers" of the fourth and fifth centuries rejected the "Jewish" practices of the Early Church, marginalized the Old Testament, and developed a Christian theology more influenced by the pagan Greek religious philosophy of Plato than Moses. The OT provides the unique understanding of God and man which is absolutely essential to Biblical faith and doctrine. When the New Testament is divorced from the OT even the Gospel is misunderstood. Elizabeth Achtemeier, a biblical scholar and author of the book, The Old Testament and The Proclamation of the Gospel, writes:

The present dilemma of the church is not that it has merely abandoned the Old Testament and is living and acting solely on the basis of the New. The present dilemma of the church is that it is attempting to carry on its life apart from the totality of its Scripture. As a result there has arisen, in the place of biblical faith, a popular American "Reader's Digest religion," which is characterized by naturalism, ethical humanism, and mythological understanding of the nature of man, as well as by popular mysticism and individualism.

Sure, Christian pastors and priests may nod to the OT for interesting stories (and tithing authority!), but have largely rejected its basis for Christian faith, doctrine and practice. Whereas the NT writers leaned heavily upon the OT Scriptures in all matters of faith, those who came later had a falling out (falling away/apostasy) with that OT foundation. We know of God by his historical actions and revelation--most of which are found in the OT. Jesus didn't come to start a new religion, but came as Yahweh's Messiah, the Son of the Creator God, to turn hearts to his Father, the God of Israel.

I should add that even secular theologians, like Bart Ehrman, recognize that Jesus came preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, but that later "Christians" changed the message to one ABOUT Jesus as opposed to the one that Jesus taught.

Here is an news piece about an SDA member's recent death:

Seventh-Day Adventist

First Conscientious Objector to Win Medal of Honor, Dies at Age 87

 

Desmond T. Doss, Sr., who braved ridicule to serve in World War II as a U.S. Army medic without carrying a gun, and who labored on a Sabbath, May 5, 1945, to rescue 75 wounded soldiers pinned down by enemy gunfire on the island of Okinawa, died March 23 at his residence in Piedmont, Alabama. Doss, the only conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II, was 87 years of age. 

http://news.adventist.org/data/2006/02/1143202005/index.html.en

While the SDA church has tended to be less vocal against military service than most in the COG, some of its members were (and are) conscientious objectors. Interesting to me, before seeing the above story this morning, yesterday I updated my article on Military Service and the COGs.

03/27/06 a.m. The About Us portion of Rolland D. Wile's Remnant Church of God states,

By January 1998 it was evident that the line we had drawn in the sand was about to be washed away. The apostasy that had begun in the spring of 1986 was now nearly complete 12 years later. The line we had drawn, of course, was the 7th day Sabbath and the Holy Days of God...

We believed we were leaving the WWCG so we would be able to worship God in the way the Holy Spirit led us, but looking back we realize that it was just time for God to raise up the Remnant Church of Revelation 12:17. We had believed that the Laodicean Church age would be the last, but God was now revealing something different. As the Laodiceans flee into a spiritual wilderness, (devoid of all spiritual understanding, Rev. 12:14), God would raise up a final church which would keep the Commandments of God, have the testimony of Jesus, and war with Satan. We believe we are the beginning of that remnant and that the return of our Savior is near, (even at the door). In Romans 11:4 we see, in type, that the remnant will probably number 7000 at the return of Jesus Christ.

Of course, the apostasy in WCG was clear much before 1998 as most everyone knows. But not all understood when it happened at the same time. The above position--i.e. a different understanding of the work and Laodicea--is typical of most very small groups (I do not believe that Remnant has more than a couple of congregations). These very small groups come up with something that they feel is unique (Laodicea means "the people decide"), which in their minds, justifies why they are not part of the major Philadelphia portion of the COG that is proclaiming the Gospel.

Speaking of proclaiming the Gospel, LCG reported:

We are happy to report that this week’s television program “Does God Heal Today?” produced 2,944 responses. This is our highest response from this type of program.

An article of related interest may be Should the Church Still Try to Place its Top Priority on Proclaiming the Gospel or Did Herbert Armstrong Change that Priority for the Work?

03/26/06 p.m. I was forwarded the following notice today:

A Death Announcement: Mr. Kenneth Herrmann

Mr. Kenneth Herrmann died Thursday March 23. He served as the Ambassador College (Pasadena) Registrar and Head of Admissions as well as a teacher of astronomy, geology, and German. He also wrote many articles in the Plain Truth and Good News on science and evolution and calendar issues. He moved to the Big Sandy area in 1972 and taught there. He also taught some summer classes in Pasadena. In recent years he lived in the Richardson, Texas area. He was 82. Services will be held on Tuesday, March 28, at 10 am at the Restland Funeral Home, 13005 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75243 -- calling hours start at 9 am. Graveside service will be at 3:00 pm at the Gladewater Memorial Park in Gladewater, TX.

Address For Condolences:

Susan and Brenda Herrmann
1802 East Main Street
Louisville,
OH 44641

Also, from G&S' website:

NOTICE: Giving & Sharing Bookstore Stops Operations

The Giving & Sharing Mail Order Bookstore, PO Box 100, Neck City, MO 64849, is closed until further notice.  Please do not send new orders. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. 

Richard C. Nickels, President of Giving & Sharing, is battling a life-threatening illness.  We appreciate your understanding and prayers. 

We plan to continue updating Giving & Sharing’s website, www.giveshare.org, as well as the online publication of “Church of God News.” The “Giving & Sharing Newsletter” will not be published until further notice.  Please disregard any website or G&S publication references to books and other items available from Giving & Sharing, PO Box 100, Neck City, MO 64849.  The bookstore operations are closed.

03/26/06 a.m. Yesterday I began going through the March-April 2006 edition of UCG's Good News. And although I have not yet read all the articles, I would comment that the themes: Against sin and against Easter, as well as discussing love of the Bible, make this perhaps one of UCG's strongest editions to date.

At UCG's Council member Victor Kubik's site was the following announcement:

Richard Nickels, of Gillette, Wyoming, was recently diagnosed with adrenal cancer, which has spread to several other areas in his body. He is now (Thursday and Friday, March 23-24) undergoing a battery of tests to determine a course of treatment at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

 

Richard is very weak, but in high spirits. He looks to God to sustain his life. He was anointed and now is determined to fight for his life on the physical level with high tech therapy, nutrition therapy, and possibly other therapies and techniques. He has requested the prayers of the brethren for God to heal him. He said, “Please ask them to pray. I really need God’s help, now.”

 

Richard and his wife Shirley operate an electronic newsletter called, Church of God News—Positive News of the Churches of God. Richard is president of Giving and Sharing, a charitable organization serving Sabbatarians around the world. He and Shirley host a fellowship group of Good News subscribers in Eastern Wyoming using United Church of God sermon DVD’s and materials. These services have been temporally suspended because of his health trial.

I had wondered why the COG News had not come out, nor my emails answered about this. R. Nickels did a lot of work on COG history, especially in the 19th century.

LCG had the following in yesterday's announcements:

World Crisis Ahead. According to a European think tank based in France, the next few years could see a massive global crisis. They use almost prophetic language to refer to events that they expect to occur over the next couple of years: a “monetary, financial, and soon economic crisis without precedent on a planetary scale” (Europe2020.org, Feb. 15, 2006). These forecasters base their predictions on the short-term and long-term implications of seven separate crises currently present on the world scene:

1. Crisis of confidence in the US dollar

2. Crisis of US financial imbalances (trade, debt, etc.)

3. Oil crisis (world-wide)

4. Crisis of the American leadership

5. Crisis of the Arab-Muslim world

6. Global governance crisis

7. European governance crisis

Bible prophecies also indicate terrible trials that will be global in scope will explode at the end of the age (Mt 24:21-22; II Tim 3:1).  We need to watch these trends.—Scott Winnail, Daniel Bennett

Even those in Europe are beginning to understand that crises are expected to become more common, thus more severe.

Yesterday, xCG's Jared Olar posted the following (bolding his):

Catholics, including myself, admit that the Catholic Church does not teach many of the beliefs or opinions held by members of the first and second century A.D. Church, but that’s not the same as saying that the Catholic Church does not teach many of the beliefs of the first and second century A.D. Church. What a church’s official doctrines are and what the beliefs and opinions of some of its members might be are not necessarily the same thing (and frequently are not the same thing). For example, many early Catholics mistakenly believed that Rev. 20 prophesies a literal 1,000-year period to commence at the second coming of Christ, but we know that many other early Catholics did not interpret Rev. 20 that way.

There are a few points to make about this.

The first is that I am unaware of any true LEADER in the second century that taught against the 1,000 period. All the early writings available (and they were nearly all written by ordained LEADERS which are accepted/declared as bishops, saints, etc. by Roman Catholics) support the concept of a 1,000 year reign. Without going into all the details, even though it is actually against the 1,000 year period, I will simply quote some passages from The Catholic Encyclopedia on what some early leaders taught about it:

Bishop Papias of Hierapolis, a disciple of St. John, appeared as an advocate of millenarianism. He claimed to have received his doctrine from contemporaries of the Apostles, and Irenaeus narrates that other "Presbyteri", who had seen and heard the disciple John, learned from him the belief in millenarianism as part of the Lord's doctrine. According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., 111, 39) Papias in his book asserted that the resurrection of the dead would be followed by one thousand years of a visible glorious earthly kingdom of Christ, and according to Irenaeus (Adv. Haereses, V, 33), he taught that the saints too would enjoy a superabundance of earthly pleasures...

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, a native of Asia Minor, influenced by the companions of St. Polycarp, adopted millenarian ideas, discussing and defending them in his works against the Gnostics (Adv. Haereses, V, 32)...

A witness for the continued belief in millenarianism in the province of Asia is St. Melito, Bishop of Sardes in the second century...

Tertullian, the protagonist of Montanism, expounds the doctrine (in his work now lost, "De Spe Fidelium" and in "Adv. Marcionem", IV) that at the end of time the great Kingdom of promise, the new Jerusalem, would be established and last for the space of one thousand years. All these millenarian authors appeal to various passages in the prophetic books of the Old Testament, to a few passages in the Letters of St. Paul and to the Apocalypse of St. John...

The most powerful adversary of millenarianism was Origen of Alexandria. In view of the Neo-Platonism on which his doctrines were founded and of his spiritual-allegorical method of explaining the Holy Scriptures, he could not side with the millenarians. He combated them expressly, and, owing to the great influence which his writings exerted on ecclesiastical theology especially in Oriental countries, millenarianism gradually disappeared from the idea of Oriental Christians.

Though some Catholic members may not have believed it, it was not until the third century Alexandrian heretic Origen (and he was later denounced by the Roman Catholics as a heretic), that any major Catholic accepted leader opposed this concept. And over time (after the true Christians in Asia Minor left were they had been--please see the article The Churches of Revelation 2 & 3), those who compromised with the truth accepted the heretic Origen's position.

My second point is that there are simply no writings from any so-called Bishops of Rome prior to the third century on this subject. Actually, there are so few writings attributed to any "Bishop of Rome" before the third century that there is absolutely no proof that other than the observance of Sunday (and Victor's view of preeminence), that the early Roman Church held many doctrines that any would characterize as distinctly Roman Catholic. None, for example, wrote about the trinity. None, for example, wrote about celibacy. Basically, the writings we have from this period come almost exclusively from leaders in Asia Minor and Antioch. And those few from Rome, do not take any distinctly Roman Catholic position on very much--it was in the third century that many distinctly Roman Catholic practices became apparent (and many of these were adopted from Alexandria).

The truth of the matter is that although there were some true Christians in Rome in the second century, the true leadership--those faithful to the apostolic teachings, even according to many Roman Catholic scholars and supporters--was mainly based in Asia Minor. This is documented in the articles What Does Rome Actually Teach About Early Church History? and Location of the Early Church: Another Look at Ephesus, Smyrna, and Rome.

However, my third, and by far most important point, is that the Bible is to be the source of doctrines (2 Timothy 3:16) and the Bible clearly teaches the 1,000 period:

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.

In my case, since the Bible says it, I believe it. Yet xCG says those that reading the above and agreeing that "Rev. 20 prophesies a literal 1,000-year period to commence at the second coming of Christ" are "mistaken".

However, the Roman Catholics most often rely on what they call "Sacred Tradition" instead of the Bible for doctrine (please see the article Tradition and the Bible). The official Roman Catholic position seems to be that the apostles passed on more teachings than were in the Bible, hence it is acceptable to them to rely on the traditions of what the apostles allegedly added.

But in the 1,000 year matter, this causes two problems for the Roman Catholics. The first is that they are TAKING AWAY from what the Bible teaches. And the second is that their own accepted writings show that the 1,000 period was part of the apostolic tradition (see portions from The Catholic Encyclopedia that I bolded above).

Hence the Roman Catholics have the problem of teaching a doctrine that is contrary to the Bible, contrary to all known early tradition, and was pushed by one that they later condemned as a heretic.

Actually, it is only the true COGs that can demonstrate that they hold to the doctrines and the teachings of those in the second century who actually relied on the Bible for doctrine. And in time, I intend to show more of those doctrines here. A possible article of interest may be Did The Early Church Millenarianism?

03/25/06 a.m. Earlier this week, the Edmonton Sun reported:

So which religious groups are allowed to eat what? We checked with Correctional Service Canada, who find themselves catering to a wide variety of "dinner guests" from all walks of life.

- Buddhism: Variations depend on the specific school of Buddhism, and the country-of-origin to which followers are associated. The Mahayana school (the most common in Canada) is less strict than the Theravada school, which follows a strict vegan diet...

- Wicca: Covens that believe in a divinity that protects animals observe vegetarian diets.

- Worldwide Church of God: Pork and shellfish are forbidden.

The complete article is available at http://www.edmontonsun.com/Lifestyle/Food/2006/03/23/1501430-sun.html While that was true of the old WCG, it is not true of the current group with that name. An article of related interest may be The New Testament and Unclean Meats.

Last night, ICG's Mark Armstrong reported:

You may have seen a news article that has gained national attention today, where the St. Paul, Minnesota City Hall removed an Easter display of painted eggs and bunnies from their front lawn out of concern that it “would offend non-Christians.”  Of course, if there was a chance that it would have offended Christians, it probably would have been left in place!  But the bigger point is that anybody with a moment to spare can easily find that the practices associated with Easter were not associated with Christianity until three centuries AD.  And that is not open to argument or a matter of opinion, it is a fact of corroborated history! 

Of course, true Christians would not use Easter eggs or other pagan practices, but the media and the government have long had a difficult time knowing who the true Christians were.

Part of the reason is that most believe that Justin Martyr was one, yet even he admitted that there were Sabbath-keeping Christians that he tried not to affiliate with:

In Ephesus, Justin Martyr wrote, in response to a Jew named Tyrpho, "...some of your race, who say they believe in this Christ, compel those Gentiles who believe in this Christ to live in all respects according to the law given by Moses, or choose not to associate so intimately with them, I in like manner do not approve of them" (Justin.  Dialogue with Trypho. Excerpted from Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1. Edited by Alexander Roberts & James Donaldson. American Edition, 1885. Online Edition Copyright © 2005 by K. Knight).

Hence Justin is essentially admitting that there were Sabbath-keeping Christians that did not hold the same teachings that he did in the second century. The odd thing about Justin is that even by the standards the Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Protestants hold, he would have been a heretic (plus his teachings suggest that he would not have considered any of them to have been true Christians). More information is included in the article Justin Martyr: Saint, Heretic, or Apostate?

I also added the above quote from Justin to the article Location of the Early Church: Another Look at Ephesus, Smyrna, and Rome.

03/24/06 a.m. UCG's Victor Kubik reports:

LifeNets work in the Chernobyl area is featured in the April 2006 issue of the Rotarian magazine that goes monthly to 1.3 million Rotarians in 33,000 clubs in over 100 countries.

In its latest issue of Horizons CGOM reports:

Arguments on the 'unity' of God rage even after almost two thousand years of theological jousting.

CGOM then essentially (and correctly) concludes that the unitarian and trinitarian positions are in error. More information on this subject can be found in the article Binitarian View: One God, Two Beings Before the Beginning

In other matters, there is one false statement at xCG that is so absurd, that I have decided I really should address it here. This morning, Jared Olar actually posted the following:

And yet, amazingly, Thiel and the LCG still insist that acceptance of Armstrong’s “18 truths” is the litmus test for who is and who isn’t a true Christian...

The above statement from xCG shows why no one interested in the truth would want to accept the posts there. Neither I, nor LCG, has ever stated that acceptance of Armstrong’s “18 truths” is the litmus test for who is and who isn’t a true Christian...

There have been many posts and several articles at the COGwriter site on that subject for years. But, sadly, sites like xCG continue to inaccurately post about what I have written on this and other subjects.

A true Christian is defined by Paul in the Bible as one with the Spirit of Christ:

Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His (Romans 8:9).

That is the biblical definition. That is my definition. And that is what I understand LCG's position to be.

Now what about the 18 truths? What I have written, and what LCG has published, is that HWA claimed that God used him to raise up the Philadelphia portion of the COG and to restore at least 18 truths that the Smyrna Church (Church of God, Seventh Day) no longer had, but that the Ephesus (apostolic) portion of the COG had.

For those who do not believe that God used HWA to raise up that era (a related article is Do You Believe God Used Herbert Armstrong to Raise Up the Philadelphia Era of the Church of God?), then they will not much care about the 18 truths.

But if God did use HWA to do that, then Jesus statement to "Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown" (Revelation 3:11) should be important as the 18 truths were part of what the Philadelphia era should hold fast to--the true remnant of the Philadelphia Church will also do the work given to the Philadelphia Church (a related article of interest may be Should the Church Still Try to Place its Top Priority on Proclaiming the Gospel or Did Herbert Armstrong Change that Priority for the Work?).

Anyway, here is what I wrote (and LCG published) on the 18 truths matter:

Philadelphians are given a warning: "Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown" (Revelation 3:11). Mr. Armstrong wrote that he restored to the Church of God at least 18 truths that the previous era had lost (Mystery of the Ages, p. 251). Philadelphians are the ones who hold to those truths (as well as all other biblical truths)-including governance-and will be able to have a crown and to rule!

Philadelphians have "kept My command to persevere" (Revelation 3:10). Holding fast to Truth, while putting a priority on proclaiming the Gospel, is what sets the Philadelphian Church apart.

Note that we do not claim that one needs to accept those truths to be a true Christian. Hence, xCG is once again not accurately portraying my and LCG's position. The complete article is available online: What Is a Philadelphian?

03/23/06 p.m. The March-April 2006 edition of LCG's Tomorrow's World has now arrived. In it, it listed 181 television stations and 14 radio stations now play LCG's broadcast.

I was especially pleased to see a radio station listed in Guyana as I do not recall having had one there before.

CEM's Ron Dart recently posted:

In the second and third chapters of the book of Revelation, we have seven letters to seven churches. There is not a single one of these churches that is faultless, any more than there is a single one us who is without flaw. After the evaluation they each receive, and after the correction offered, the Spirit says this to each of the churches in turn:

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God (Revelation 2:7 NIV).

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death (v. 11).

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it (v. 17).

To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations – He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery' -- just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star (vv. 26-28).

He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels (Revelation 3:5 NIV).

Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name (v. 12).

To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne (v. 21).

Over the years, I have heard endless speculation about the meaning of these seven letters. Most of that speculation has been fruitless, and often misleading. But there is one thing that is perfectly clear if you can hear it. Every single one of us, and every single church, has something to overcome. What God wants us to do is to struggle, to improvise, adapt, overcome, and to become stronger in the process.

CEM, like ICG, and CGI, has rejected the concept of Church eras. Seven times Jesus said. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (Revelation 2:7,11,17,29;3:6,13,22). An article of related interest may be The Churches of Revelation 2 & 3. Other articles of related interest may be Christian Educational Ministries, Intercontinental Church of God, and Teachings of the Church of God, International.

On other matters, xCG posted:

Even St. Paul in Romans 8 compares the resurrection unto life to rebirth. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Bible’s “born again” language refers to becoming a Christian, not being raised from the dead. Herbert Armstrong did not just say that “born again” = “resurrection unto life.” He also insisted, due to his ignorance of koine Greek , that the verb gennao means “begotten,” not “born.” He also thought “begotten” means “conceived,” whereas neither gennao nor “begotten” refer to conception—they refer to birth. Therefore Thiel has no basis for his belief in Armstrong’s ungrammatical and heretical “begotten not born” doctrine. Foisting an Armstrongist rereading onto St. Theophilus is no more plausible than foisting a seventh-day Sabbatarian rereading onto St. Ignatius is.

There is no trace anywhere in the writings of St. Theophilus, nor, as far as I know, in the writings of anyone else prior to Herbert Armstrong, of the doctrine that “born again” in Holy Scripture refers not to Christian conversion but only to the resurrection. Thiel has implicitly admitted as much by his inability to find anyone prior to the 20th. century who agreed with Armstrong’s assertions...

Actually, because I do not chose to point out every fallacy at xCG, this does not mean I implicitly agree with those who disagree with us.

In the fourth century, it was understood that Christians are first begotten, that Jesus was the first born of the dead, and that we become born again later. For even though he had other heretical ideas, the Catholic saint Athanasius apparently understood this as he wrote,

For God not only created them to be men, but called them to be sons, as having begotten them. For the term 'begat' is here as elsewhere expressive of a Son, as He says by the Prophet, 'I begat sons and exalted them;' and generally, when Scripture wishes to signify a son, it does so, not by the term 'created,' but undoubtedly by that of 'begat.' And this John seems to say, 'He gave to them power to become children of God, even to them that believe on His Name; which were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' And here too the cautious distinction is well kept up, for first he says 'become,' because they are not called sons by nature but by adoption; then he says 'were begotten,' because they too had received at any rate the name of son...He became man, that, as the Apostle has said, He who is the 'Beginning' and 'First-born from the dead, in all things might have the preeminence...He said to be 'First-born from the dead,' not that He died before us, for we had died first; but because having undergone death for us and abolished it, He was the first to rise, as man, for our sakes raising His own Body. Henceforth He having risen, we too from Him and because of Him rise in due course from the dead...He is called 'First-born among many brethren' because of the relationship of the flesh, and 'First-born from the dead,' because the resurrection of the dead is from Him and after Him...And as He is First-born among brethren and rose from the dead 'the first fruits of them that slept;' so, since it became Him 'in all things to have the preeminence (Athanasius. Discourse II Against the Arians, Chapters 59,60,61,63,64. Excerpted from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 4. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. American Edition, 1892. Online Edition Copyright © 2005 by K. Knight).

Thus the idea of being begotten when converted and being born again at the resurrection is not a relatively new one among professing Christians. But unlike the idea of being born again now, it is not a concept with pre-Christian (pagan) origins. More information can be found in the article Born Again: A Question of Semantics?

Click here for previous news

Click here to go back to the COGwriter home page

Volume 9, issue 34 COGwriter B. Thiel (c) 2006