AN OPEN LETTER
To the true and faithful members of God’s Church
– Worldwide –
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus,
How quickly time flies! It seems like only a short time ago that we were observing the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread. And more recently we observed the Feast of Firstfruits, or Pentecost.
The Fall Festivals are now before us: the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and then the Feast of Tabernacles to be followed by the Last Great Day which pictures the Great White Throne Judgment.
All of these commanded observances reveal to us God’s Master Plan of Salvation for mankind.
For God’s plan of salvation for all of mankind to actually begin there is to be the spring harvest of the Firstfruits who are to be resurrected and changed when Jesus Christ returns to this earth as pictured by the Feast of Trumpets.
The final fall harvest of humanity will later begin taking place, and is pictured by the Feast of Ingathering, more commonly referred to as the Feast of Tabernacles.
Immediately following will be the Last Great Day which pictures the resurrection of all of mankind who never had the opportunity for salvation in this age.
It is truly a wonderful warm glowing feeling when we look at the people of this world around us and know because of God’s Master Plan of Salvation all of these people and their children will one day have the spiritual blindness removed from their eyes. They will then have the same opportunity that we now have to come to know the TRUE GOD and the blessing of His wondrous caring LOVE (John 3:16-17).
When we really dwell deeply on these things our hearts should be filled to the brim and running over with heartfelt gratitude and thanks that God the Father and His beloved Son Jesus Christ cares so deeply for all who have ever lived or will yet live.
This becomes even more meaningful for us when we realize this also includes our own families who are now sleeping in their graves.
From time to time most of us have visited the family cemetery and just stood there looking down where our loved ones are sleeping and mediating. Deep in thought and visualizing the future time to come when those graves will open their mouths and they will come forth in renewed life (Isaiah 26:19).
Very probably Christ will enable all of His resurrected saints, including you and me, to be there when parents, family members, and other dearly beloved ones are renewed to life.
Can we actually picture the whole sleeping world waking up in renewed life, men, women, children and babies? In so doing can we visualize the looks of bewilderment with awe and thoughts of wonderment, as to why, and what next?
Family members and loved ones will look at each other with astonishment and almost total unbelief they are alive! After the initial shock they will begin hugging one another with great joy to realize they are alive again. An even greater joy will be to grasp the fact they are once again reunited in life with husbands, wives, children, babies, and friends. Lifting up their eyes they will see all around them the many others standing in life experiencing the same joy with bewilderment and amazement.
It is exciting and exhilarating to think of what the incredible future God’s Master Plan reveals and pictures to us! A future that is now very near!
Somewhat like a beautiful flower whose lovely petals will first open up after the morning dew so it will be when the first step of God’s Master Plan comes to pass. The time when Jesus Christ in His awesome power and great glory finally appears and begins His descent to this earth and instantaneously changes His people from flesh and blood to eternal Spirit beings and begins His new world.
Christ’s coming is the time we have anticipated and lived for all of the years we have been blessed to be members of His Church. This is why we have endured the trials, tests, and continuing to endure in spite of them while clinging to Christ, His truth, and way of life! To then realize, THIS IS IT!
This is what we have lived for, dreamed about, and now the awesome blessing of Spirit life with our wonderful and caring Savior, no longer tarrying, it is here! Our race will then have been won and our reward even more incredible, magnificent, and awesome, than we could have ever imagined (I Corinthians 2:9)!
There will probably no more than a brief second in time to look up and see Jesus Christ returning and then to experience our instantaneous change in the twinkling of an eye!
At the same time you and I along with each one of God’s resurrected saints will find one of God’s angels standing there beside each of us (Matthew 24:31)!
Away we shall go up into this earth’s atmosphere to where Jesus Christ and all of His holy angels are descending mounted on their white horses (Revelation19:11-14). The angels will then guide each one, including you and me, to our appointed place among the multiple thousands of others who will also be in that first resurrection.
What an awesome and incredible thought to realize we now have the promise of God the Father and Jesus Christ that IF we are counted worthy by Him to be in this first resurrection, THEN we will be changed into His likeness, born again into Spirit life, as members of His divine Family.
Think for a moment regarding the duality in human birth and the coming Spirit birth! We were begotten and later born into human life from a seed of our human father. A life filled with all of its frailties, trials, and troubles.
We have again been begotten and to be later born into Spirit life as the result of the seed from God our Father and sealed with it (Ephesians 1:13). At the coming of Jesus Christ we will then experience that new birth into Spirit life (John 3:2-8; Romans 8:11).
As Spirit Members of God’s Family there will be no more pain, sorrow, tears or loneliness (Revelation 21:4). Never again will anyone ever have to walk alone or fail to have someone to put a loving arm around them. The former things will have passed away.
Dear brothers and sisters we must realize where we are in time and know we are on the very precipice of this awesome and wonderful change that will soon take place with God’s people. And IF we remain faithful to our God and maintain a close relationship with our Father and our Savior Jesus Christ, our Lord, we will be among them.
If we could just grasp how close – and how quickly time passes, I think we would be motivated to the highest level in making an all-out effort to be found acceptable by Jesus Christ and to be numbered among those many thousands who will have a part in making the wonderful changes come true in God’s New World.
It saddens me when I think of what must soon come to pass before Christ returns and know just as a woman has to experience the pangs in giving birth to a baby so will we have to face and experience perilous times between here and the coming of Jesus Christ back to this earth. Times of great trials and further testing for all of us! Terrible and tragic times for Israel and the world as well.
There are the times when I have taken my wife shopping and while sitting in my car waiting for her I have often observed men, women, and children, walking in front of the car going about their daily routines; and as I observe them, I feel sorrow, for I know there is no real comprehension of what is now shortly just ahead of them even though millions have heard the WARNING over many years.
Jesus Christ had such great feelings of love and compassion for the people of Judea that just before He was crucified He looked down upon Jerusalem and wept. He actually cried with tears flowing down His cheeks because of what He knew was going to come upon them just a few short years from that time (Luke 19:41-44; Luke 23:27-30).
I picture in my mind what God says in Scripture regarding the terrible deaths by which people in our time will die, the slavery many will have to experience before much longer, and it saddens me greatly.
My sorrow is greater to realize that along with all of these people will be the martyrdom of the saints knowing they will have to win their salvation through the horrors of excruciating painful deaths!
Among them will be men and women you and I both know. This sorrows me all the more when I realize many, if not all, could avoid the horrors of these terrible times if they would just WAKE UP! It hurts knowing only the few will be counted worthy to escape and be taken to a place of refuge from the Great Tribulation.
With this in mind consider the heartfelt feelings and expressed thoughts of Jeremiah who knew what God had said He would do to Judea because of their many sins; and God did!
“O my soul, my soul! I am pained in my very heart! My heart makes a noise within me; I cannot hold my peace, because you have heard, O my soul, the SOUND of the trumpet, the ALARM OF WAR” (Jeremiah 4:19).
God’s late apostle expressed the same thoughts for the Church, Israel, and the world because he knew what is soon to come for God had revealed this to him:
“I, personally, SEE, what lies ahead! It fills me with frantic TERROR – for the safety of all the people whom I love – people who could be spared and protected from the catastrophes they are bringing on themselves – even as I fully expect to be spared [and was by death] through God’s supernatural protection – BUT THEY WON’T! WILL YOU UNDERSTAND? Will you HEED – and spare your own precious life from the things to come? WILL you take warning?” Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong, ‘Heart to Heart Talk with the Editor’ Plain Truth, April 1956 --
You and I, as well as all other members, should give very serious thought whether we are living the lives we should that are pleasing and acceptable before our God (II Corinthians 13:5).
Unless we are in full belief and practice of the TRUTH as God has made known in Scripture and restored within His Church through His late apostle, and are enduring, overcoming and growing, we could very well be among those who are to experience the horrors of this soon coming time for it is sure to take place, so says Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:21-22).
Please do not expect leaders or others to make it happen for you for salvation is to be worked out individually with fear and trembling (I Corinthians 10:11; Philippians 2:12)!
It is very sorrowful and painful when we stop to consider the present state of the Church for it is apparent that there are many who have not yet learned from what has taken place over recent years! They are the sleeping virgins that are defined as being of the Laodicean attitude and spirit and will have their part in the Great Tribulation UNLESS they wake up in time (Revelation 6:9-11).
Brethren, the resurrection must be our major goal and pursued while we yet have time just as did the apostle Paul (Philippians 3:8-15). By so doing we then have the promise of experiencing the New Spirit Birth and then glorified in the same image and likeness of Jesus Christ, to live forever and ever, in complete harmony, unity, love, and peace. Isn’t this what we really want?
Your brother in Christ,
Don Billingsley
P. O. Box 8819,
Modesto, CA 95357
(209) 772-0737.
www.cog-ff.com