Church of God News

Roderick Meredith has normally written co-worker letters every month or two, but in July he has sent out his third letter in consecutive weeks. His second letter on July 12th called for a church-wide fast for the Sabbath of July 30th – after receiving “a very heartfelt note from one of our leading younger ministers,” saying “… I know that in the past, our Church-wide fasts are often in relation to an ‘event.’ However, as you have noted, it seems that we are under ‘spiritual attack.’ In addition, it seems like many of God’s people are ‘letting down’ spiritually and are more sensitive to offence and rumor.”
The ‘spiritual attack’ is the lawsuit by the Scarboroughs, and there is actually a related ‘event’ – a 2 hour court hearing on the Monday after this scheduled fast, when LCG’s lawyers will be attempting to get the case dismissed.
His latest letter acknowledges at last that the internet is now a more important medium than print or TV: “… we have been very encouraged by the growth in our worldwide Internet impact. Although we are quite small by the world’s standards, God has greatly blessed our various Internet efforts in helping us utilize new technology to reach new people whom we may not otherwise reach through classic print media or cable or satellite television. For example, in 2016 we began investing more to promote the Tomorrow’s World telecast on all of the main streaming-video-on-demand (SVOD) Internet platforms, including Roku, GoogleTV, AppleTV and Amazon FireTV. Just as we also do with conventional television, we measure the expenses and the results on Internet television to ensure that we are being ‘good stewards’ of God’s tithes and offerings, and the results have been quite encouraging! For example, our SVOD platforms are now producing many hundreds of responses per week, and are in recent weeks bringing in more subscribers than some of our nationwide television stations! … our 2016 Roku advertising campaign in particular has generated more than 3.2 million ad impressions, increasing our installation base to now well over 45,000! On the Internet, we have long advertised Tomorrow’s World magazine, Tomorrow’s World telecast and other material all around the world. And recently we have begun testing additional, intensive geographic advertising in a few cities, including Charlotte, Toronto, London, Johannesburg and Harrismith, South Africa, Adelaide, Australia, and Mexico City.
Additionally, we are reaching increasing numbers every month with telecasts and webcasts on YouTube. As many of you know, people are increasingly watching video over the Internet on their ‘Smartphones’ and other computers, so this is another area where we are really investing time and energy, and we are thankful for the results so far! To share some encouraging numbers with each of you, currently the English-language YouTube page has generated more than 6.7 million views, the French-language YouTube page now has more than 500,000 views, and the Spanish-language YouTube page recently passed 4.6 million views! …

And, as we see tightening ‘censorship’ and hostility to God’s Truth increasing around the world, we have already seen on more than a few occasions where some local television station will censor or reject one of our telecasts, but that telecast is still able to be seen on one of our many Internet platforms.”

In October 2014 we reported about Roderick Meredith’s audio sermon, God’s Government Is Vital, in which he said, “I’ve asked Mr McNair and Mr League, they’ve been working as a team to get all the information on many of these things, and I’m working with them and other leaders … We’re trying to keep God’s church clean.”
“We found that some of these people we’ve had to put out … they often lie and lie, and they’ll twist and turn, and turn things around …”

This was a ‘must play’ sermon for the Day of Atonement, together with a sermonette by Rod McNair, Ministerial Authority is Based on Love, in which he set out three measures for disciplining members who cause division within the church by refusing to submit fully to the authority of ministers: Suspension, Disfellowshipping and Marking. This is all done in love, he says, as “love will cover a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

(Bob League, who was named in the legal action by the Scarboroughs, alongside Meredith and McNair, died in January 2015.)

LCG removed the link to the sermon, ‘due to issues with the item’s content’, but one of our readers has provided a new link to God’s Government Is Vital.

Continuing Church of God

Robert Thiel writes: “We are pleased to announce that a group from Serbia has declared that it wants to be part of the Continuing Church of God.”

The leader of the Serbian group is Aleksandar (Sasha) Veljic, who has had articles published both about him and by him since the days of In Transition. Alignment with the CCG will fulfill his ‘zeal to translate’.
In the October 1996 issue, editor John Robinson writes: “In its second issue (May 26, 1995), In Transition ran Mr. Veljic’s account of Sabbath-keepers in Ukraine and the hardships they endure to keep the faith. Mr. Veljic had been part of the pioneer group, then sponsored by the Ambassador Foundation, that taught English fellow Sabbatarians in Ukraine in July and August 1994…
Before enrolling at AU he had learned of the WCG through an aunt he was visiting in England. He was baptized in March 1992 by two ministers based in England. ‘As they were counseling me for baptism,’ Mr. Veljic said, ‘they dwelled on counting the costs. They asked me if I was willing to die for my beliefs. Both of these men have now rejected the truths they asked me if I was willing to die for’…
Mr. Veljic speaks his native Serbian, Russian, English and Spanish and is hard at work on Italian…
‘I’ve translated some things into Serbian, and Croatian is very similar. I feel a passion to get the truth out. There are 15 to 20 million living in the former Yugoslavia. The gospel hasn’t gone out in my native language. Some have told me the work is finished; it’s been done. But I don’t believe it. I believe God’s greatest still work lies ahead.’ Mr. Veljic said he has a ‘zeal to translate,’ but he isn’t interested in being a leader. ‘I have no ministerial aspirations.’
Sasha Veljic writes in his recent e-mail to CCG’s Robert Thiel: [full text here]

“In the beginning of 1995, the apostasy set in and I organized a student underground at Ambassador College. Later, I survived the United Church of God mess and joined David Hulme as I believed he was going to be the one to lead God’s people faithfully. In the course of time it became apparent that he was rather interested in his own career and was planning to change various doctrines. Thus, I was gradually pushed out of Church of God – an International Community in 2005, because I wasn’t going to give up on prophecy, identity of Israel and relations with friends in various COGs. In 2014, some of my friends felt compelled to leave COG-IC and called for reconciliation [The Father’s Call].

I renewed my contact with them as I responded to their call for reconciliation. I was offered a contact with a minister in Europe, but I had no plans to join that group. I wanted to see where it was heading to. This year I established cordial relations with you based on the end-time Work you have been doing. In spite of all my earlier disappointing results in cooperation with some COG leaders, I decided to give it again a chance, because I realize that I cannot really achieve anything worthwhile on my own, nor do I want to be a ‘lone wolf’…
So far I didn’t feel I could really trust any COG leadership to the point of cooperating with them and joining their groups. And sadly, mostly to their shame I would say, my translation talent was not used, and the Work in Serbia, however small, could not pick up the pace due to their lack of interest…

Since you have entrusted me to do what I can do well (translation/editing), my experience with you is different. It is especially refreshing to see your commitment to virtually reach all the nations!”