We will start with the man in Eastern Europe. He had to examine religion generally including the Asian Liberation theologies. He came to accept that the Bible was the true word of God. He then had to identify it and the church most obediently following it. He says of that process: “In 2000-2005 years: I met with members of different Christian denominations and read their literature and then I began to read the Bible. I had understood that any religion can’t be one of the ways to God. Because different religions have different teachings, but different teachings can’t be all true at the same time. One of them is true or another (is true). Then I had got the new question – which religion is true – Christianity, Hindu, Islam, Buddhism or any other religion. I met with everybody, who was related with religion and read all that they gave me. For a long time I couldn’t answer the question – which religion is true. And finally I had found the answer. Through the Bible I had been convinced that God is love, and His love is perfect and unlimited. Such love I had found in Christ - in His love, in His teaching, in His life and in His death for everybody. I had understood that there doesn’t exist such love that is more than Christ’s love. And I had understood that only Christ is the way to the true God. So I had been convinced that only Christianity is the true religion. But, as I had seen, Christianity is separated in many denominations. And I again got the new question – which of them is true or maybe all of them are pleasing to God. I continued to study the Bible and met with members of the Orthodox church, Evangelical church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists. Then I had been convinced that the Bible is the word of God and only through the Bible could I find the truth. Then I had been convinced that only one church is pleasing for God, because Christ had made only one church with its structure and teaching. And different churches with their different heads and teachings can’t be all ruled by God. That can be only one church. And I decided to find this church. And I knew that only that church, which teaching completely corresponds with the Bible is the true Church of God. I quickly stopped contact with the Orthodox Church, because of their worship to icons, relation with the government and many other things that don’t correspond with the Bible. Then through the Bible I had been convinced that after death man’s soul doesn’t go to paradise or hell and [does] not migrate in other beings, but a man returns to the ground [and becomes] dust and can’t think anything before the resurrection. So I had stopped contact with [the] Evangelical church and had contact only with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh day Adventists.” His process narrowed the search down to these two structures and then by elimination he realised that both were defective. The JWs were defective in their rejection of the Sabbath and the Law of God and their misunderstanding of the millennial system, and the SDAs were defective in their failure to keep the Biblical Sabbaths, New Moons and Holy Days and their acceptance of Trinitarianism over recent years. Their acceptance of Ellen G. White’s errors and vegetarianism were also serious limitations to all of those that enter them. He was then faced with the Churches of God. For someone coming upon them the divisions and false doctrines of the Armstrong system are indeed perplexing to the outsider just as they are to the insiders also. Armstrong’s heretical doctrine of Ditheism is a serious problem to the Churches of God in the last days, and the US was the source of this heresy in all the Churches of God of the twentieth century (see the paper Ditheism (No. 76B)).
Posted on: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 11:46:50 +0000
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