Sabbath

[Craig]

G'day Ray

It has been some months since I wrote to you, specifically on the matter of the Sabbath.  I received your reply and thought about it for quite some time, day and night.   For months, I wondered why I couldn't see what you were getting at.  I knew that I had learned a huge amount of valuable information from you on so many Scriptural topics, which I had never been given by anybody else over the past 40 years or more.

I was convinced that you couldn't be so helpful and able to enlighten me of what the scriptures say in so many areas, but when it came to this Sabbath observance topic, it just didn't "make sense to me".   But I determined to persevere, thinking I would have to write back and try to disprove what you had written.....then the "lights came on".

Now it gives me pleasure to tell you that I now see what you are telling us.    This came about mainly from studying the transcript of your December 2007 Bible Study and going back and rereading the article on The Sermon on the Mount.    I clearly had "read over" the most important parts when I read it the first few times and missed what you had directed me to consider....namely the fact that The Law...all of it...is spiritual, not just that 10th commandment.      Thank you for having done that Bible study and to Kat for doing the transcribing.    I look forward to your article on The Law is Spiritual, which you indicated you have in mind to write.

   I am sure that it will be a great help to many of those of your readers who have emerged from the Worldwide CoG, where we had instilled into us the absolute necessity of ritualistically observing that 24 hour period by not doing this, not doing that and thinking we were so good for our physical deeds or "non-deeds".

I am also waiting eagerly to read the transcripts of the up-coming conference, where you are going to discuss and put in plain words for us the meaning and significance of what the Genesis account and the geological evidence provide.  I have read all the transcripts I could find where you have started to deal with this topic and I am excited to know I will be able to learn more, even though there is no way I could attend.

It is amazing that I now can see how Sabbath keepers can/do consider themselves "so right and superior", yet at the same time be so blatantly hypocritical in so many other areas, just as you have commented.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to unscramble so many wrong and twisted ideas that I had been fed over the years, although I am in no doubt that your site was mentioned to me by a friend (before he died recently), not simply as "an accident"!!

We were told years ago in Worldwide, that God has adopted a "hands-off" policy in regard to what happens on this planet  - I now know, for a certainty, that was a lie.  So many errors were inculcated into the congregations back then  - this particular idea is still believed fervently by old WCG friends I chat with and it is sad that they do not know that God IS in charge, and not sitting back waiting for an opportune moment to intervene to save the planet.   But that is what I hear when world catastrophes are introduced into the conversation.

Of course, we were then told that we were all "free moral agents", as you will no doubt recall.

You long to open their eyes, but that is God's prerogative - they shut their ears if you even hint that they have a wrong conception of God. 

Sincere thanks from Colin,      Australia