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Rebuked by the True Witness

Just now a huge assembly is meeting--the General Conference quinquennial Session of a worldwide church of some 13 million plus members. It is probably the last truly "protestant" church in existence, at least with a worldwide membership and extensive organization.

It is truly "protestant" in that it protests against Rome's substituting Sunday-worship for the biblical command to keep holy "the seventh day." This church maintains that whenever Christians are willing to substitute Sunday observance for biblical Sabbath worship, they are bowing to Rome.
 
Further, this church is "protestant" in that it rejects the Roman Catholic/popular Protestant doctrine of natural immortality of the human soul. Correctly, this church traces the origin of that doctrine to paganism and recognizes how it opens the door to Spiritualism. This church recognizes that immortality is a gift from Christ and "in Christ" only to those who believe in heart-felt obedience, by faith.

But does this world church bask in the praise of the Lord Jesus Christ? He says that "as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent" (Rev. 3:19). This severe rebuke is from the lips of the True Witness to the seventh of the seven churches of world history in Revelation 2, 3 (the last, there is no eighth). The rebuke is directed primarily to its clergy ("the angel of the church of the Laodiceans") who feel proudly "rich and increased with goods, in need of nothing" when in God's sight they are THE one [in history] "wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked" (vs. 17; the Greek has a little "ho" there which makes it say this).
 
Great developments are just before the world! Let's wake up.
 

Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.

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