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PASTOR'S REPOR-P
PUBLISHED BY THE WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD
VOL. 2, NO. 36
PASADENA. CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 18, 1978
PREACH THE MEANING OF THE FESTIVALS
by Herbert W. Armstrong
Fellow Ministers, you who will speak at a Festival site, be
sure to bring out the following:
The MEANING of these Festivals is of supreme
.
importance to
God's Church, to keep reminding us, year by year,
·
of GOD'S MASTE�
PLAN for the SPIRITUAL HARVEST of MAN.
God's creation of MAN is a DUAL creation. The physical stage
began with Adam -- the spiritual phase with Christ.
In Adam MAN cut himself off from God -- and God sentenced man
to be cut off from Him for 6,000 years
except the comparative
VERY few God called to special service in preparation for God's
KINGDOM.
Man, since Adam, has been CUT OFF from contact with God, who,
only, has salvation and eternal life to give. Those called specially
by God are, on real repentance and faith, reconciled to God by the
shed blood of Christ, the Lamb of God.
God called prophets, and He called the children of Israel,
under Moses, to be His separate and peculiar nation. But God gave
His Holy Spirit ONLY to the prophets. God gave ancient Israel
SUBSTITUTE animal sacrifices, and also, as a SUBSTITUTE for His
Holy Spirit, He gave Israel physical rituals and a ceremonial law
through Moses. But animal sacrifices could not pay the penalty of
human sin -- they were only a reminder of sin. When the Holy Spirit
came, their substitute was abolished.
God's annual Festivals are built around the physical harvest in
the Holy land, as symbolic of His SPIRITUAL harvest of HUMANS.
The Passover pictures the first step in the spiritual phase of
Man's creation. Upon repentance granted by God to those He specially
calls, and their faith in Jesus Christ, their sins are remitted by
the blood of Christ, and they are thereby RECONCILED to God -- no
longer cut off! Jesus was slain on the Passover day.
The following seven days of unleavened bread -- when no leaven
may be eaten or found in our houses -- picture the putting of sin
out of our lives -- keeping God's commandments instead. There are
two annual Sabbaths -- on the first and seventh days of this Festival.
([} 1978 Worldwide Church of God