CG7 Admires the Prophets, But…

The July-August 2007 edition of CG7-Denver’s Bible Advocate Online has an article by its Calvin Burrell that states:

Wanted:
Moral Courage and Hope

We need them today. Meet sixteen men who preached both…Now we move on to the land of the Prophets. Are you ready for some tougher terrain?

The writing prophets of Scripture spoke for God to the Hebrew people during the times of Israel’s kings. Mostly males (there were also prophetesses in Israel), these divine speakers stood in the secret counsel of God before declaring His Word. They completed the national triumvirate of prophets, priests, and kings that composed the backbone of ancient Israel’s theocracy.

Though they appear at the end of the our Old Testament, the men who wrote the books from Isaiah through Malachi lived midway from Moses to Christ. They wrote several hundred years after the Red Sea parted, the old covenant was given at Mt. Sinai, and Canaan was conquered under Joshua. Still, these prophets are several hundred years before the new covenant was written in Jesus’ blood on Calvary’s cross. Men of the times between, we may call them.

Remarkably, the Hebrew prophets bridged that 1,500-year time from Moses to Jesus in a way that honored both ends of the bridge. Loyal to the old covenant, they also rebuked the tendency of that era to rely on ritual, and they anticipated a better covenant to come through the Messiah. They knew the value of the law but easily expressed confidence in God’s grace…

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Jonah are others whose books will hold more interest as we come to know who they were and how they served the Lord through His people Israel. Seeing and “hearing” them as thinking, feeling persons who faced real crises of public life, we may even develop the sense of companionship with them. As we walk our way through their writings, we will not walk alone.

When I read CG7-Denver’s teachings on prophecy, I always notice that they teach little about future prophetic events. While the above article has some lessons from the prophets, it (like nearly all other CG7-Denver teachings on prophecy) simply does not explain the relevance of the unfilled portions of those prophetic messages.

I would encourage those in CG7 to have the moral courage to speak the warning messages AND the messages of hope that are in the whole Bible, including the writings of the prophets.

The article Church of God, Seventh Day: History and Teachings provides some quotes from others in CG7-Denver that demonstrate CG7’s limited approach to the messages of the prophets. The prophets prophetic messages should not be de-emphasized. I believe that de-emphasizing prophecy is part of why Jesus warned Sardis, “you will not know what hour I will come upon you” (Revelation 3:3) (note Herbert Armstrong and those faithful to his biblical teachings consider that CG7 is part of the Sardis Church Era).

Speaking of moral courage, another doctrinal area that CG7 seems to de-emphasize is its history prior to the mid-19th century. Two articles that discuss that would include The Sardis Church Era and The Churches of Revelation 2 & 3