Sighing & Crying… or Fleeing! | Part A

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

I stared at my friend in shock. Cynthia had been a life-long member of the Worldwide Church of God. She was now telling me about the devastating breakup of the denomination when theological changes came in following the death of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong. The denomination lost up to 50% of its membership when it gave up the feasts and the seventh-day Sabbath and became more mainstream evangelical.

“It was absolutely desolating,” Cynthia recalled tearfully. “We had been told that we were the remnant and that all the other churches were fallen. We worshipped on the seventh-day Sabbath—which, at the time, we believed to be S-turday. We observed the feasts of Yahuwah. We didn’t believe in the heresy of a triune g-dhead. We had the truth! And then for the church leaders to cast aside all those beliefs, reject the feasts, and start worshipping on S-nday, was the most upsetting experience of my entire life. There are no words to describe it.

“We lost most of our friends when we refused to remain members of a church that would give up all its Bible-based beliefs. We were told we needed to remain with the church and try to make changes from the inside out. When we left, our friends rejected us because they still thought of themselves as the remnant. And by leaving, we had proven to them that we were now among the lost.”

It is a tenet of most churches that their denomination is the only true church and all others are lost or “fallen.” It follows, then, that if you wish to be a member of the “remnant” you must be a (tithe-paying) member of the one true church: their church. It is a fact of reality that pastors, priests and rabbis have a vested interest in retaining as many members as possible. After all, the organization to which people give their tithes and offerings is the same organization that pays the leaders’ wages.

In their efforts to keep as many people coming to church as possible, religious leaders quote from Ezekiel 8-9. However, the way they interpret these chapters is deceptive and does not agree with other passages of Scripture.

Abominations in Jerusalem

Ezekiel was a contemporary of Daniel and one of the captives taken to Babylon. Ezekiel 8 records a vision given him in which the spirit of Yahuwah showed him the abominations being committed in Jerusalem and the temple there. (At this time, the temple had not yet been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s third and final invasion of Judah.)
The prophet was shown four abominations, each one worse than the last and each one moving deeper into the city and temple. These include, among other things, hidden idolatry and women weeping for Tammuz—a practice known in the Roman Catholic Church as Lent and which has been promoted as a rite of spiritual devotion in many Protestant churches.The final abomination shown Ezekiel is the worst: “And he brought me into the inner court of Yahuwah’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of Yahuwah, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Yahuwah, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.” (Ezekiel 8:16, KJV) This is nothing less than sun worship being passed off as the worship of Yahuwah!These are very grave offenses against Yahuwah. And yet, no matter how diabolical the sin, religious leaders to this day continue to insist that Yahuwah wants His people to remain in their pews. Those who separate themselves from the churches, they say, are in error and in danger of being lost. This argument, however, is twisting the Word of Yah and is leading many sincere souls to remain in the churches even while Yahuwah declares: “Go out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Revelation 18:4, 1599 Geneva Bible)