For
the Attention of Don Adams
Fax:
001 718 560 5101
Monday
April 17th 2006.
Greetings
my brother in faith and love,
Re: A tale of 2 Memorials
We both celebrated the Passover on Wednesday night. At least
we agreed on the date! One of our bible studies, Reggie, from New York, who used
to be a JW, attended one of your memorials in Long Island, along with his
fleshly brother, who still is a JW.
Reggie rang me on Thursday morning and we compared our two
celebrations. It was a very enlightening process for the pair of us. Please
permit me therefore to perform the same comparison here for you to consider…
The Long Island celebration was held at the Best Western
Hotel. As Reggie walked into the room he saw some nice flowers and a rather
sombre group of people. His first words to his fleshly brother were: Where is
the coffin?
Then he sat down for an hour during which he was offered no
physical food and no physical drink. He passed ‘the bread and the wine’ from
the brother on one side of him to the brother of the other side of him and was
able to look at the emblems but not to touch them. So he was given no salvation
food, and was therefore unable to confirm any salvation status with respect to
any covenant at that celebration. And the baptised JWs were no better off
themselves. No one there was able to confirm any salvation status that they
might have had. Reggie said that a nice respectful talk was given about the
history of the Passover, but there were no new understandings revealed in his
talk. Furthermore no brother at the celebration other than the one who gave the
talk said one word in praise to Jehovah, other than through a kingdom melody.
After an hour, they all had to leave the hotel to make room for the next
congregation.
But many of the brothers were not entirely satisfied with the
provisions of that celebration, so they went down to the Red Lobster restaurant,
where they sat at a table and actually had a meal. They drank wine and they ate
bread, neither of which regrettably was blessed, but at least they ate
something. They talked about Jesus and his sacrifice and the Passover amongst
themselves. They really enjoyed their association at the Red Lobster. But is it
not a tragedy that they had to purchase from a worldly restaurant on Nisan14 the
very association that the Watchtower had been unable to offer them.
By contrast, we held our celebration at a Holiday Inn near
Chicago. We all sat down at a large table (Luke 22:21), both the baptised and
the unbaptised alike. We started with some unblessed wine and bread because we
were hungry and thirsty. Then all those present with faith other than our 7 year
old were able to eat the loaf and drink the wine of the first cup of the
passover, knowing that it represents the Pre-Adamic Ransom Covenant, the sealing
covenant superior to the First Abrahamic Covenant. This we did before the meal
of lamb and bitter greens and unleavened bread as Jesus also did. The 4
salvation covenants represented by the 4 cups and the 4 loaves of the original
Passover celebration had been explained to the congregation earlier in the day,
so that those who wished to grasp their significance could do so beforehand.
These 4 cups that Jesus and the apostles themselves drank
that night are actually covered in the Watchtower of March 1st 1978
in an article entitled: Memorializing Christ’s death – How much longer?
(incidentally the answer to that question was 30 years). Further the position of
the meal with respect to these 4 cups is covered in the New World Translation
Reference Bible footnote to Psalm 114. For the meal was eaten with the third cup
as we both know.
After the second cup we recited the two Hallel Psalms 113 and
114, one verse each, passing them around the table. We were unable to sing them
in Hebrew, but we did manage to recite them in several other languages. So
everyone at the table including our 7 year old, praised Jehovah with their lips
in the very words of David (translated into their own languages). Then we all
started the meal and during the meal we all ate the bread and drank the cup of
the First Abrahamic Covenant itself. This is the third cup, the one that is
taken with the meal (Matthew 26:26).
I stood up and revealed a new understanding that we had
received the day before, which related to who would turn up at our celebration.
We were therefore treated to spiritual food that was a mere 24 hours old. Fresh
at the table if you will.
After the meal and the 4th cup, we recited the
Hallel Psalms 115 to 118, one verse each, going round the table. So again
everyone present including our 7 year old had a second chance to praise Jah in
the words of David, with inspired verse, written for this very celebration.
So I cannot resist quoting the famous line from Psalm 118 at
this point... The stone the builders rejected has become the head of the corner
(Psalm 118:22).
Jesus was that stone and the Jews were those builders in 33
AD. But I am that stone and you are those builders today. For the physical
temple had 4 corners, and there are 4 cornerstones to the antitypical spiritual
temple, of which Jesus is the chief cornerstone. Each cornerstone starts a new
church. The first was Jesus, the second was Paul, the third was Charles Taze
Russell, the fourth is writing this letter.
Returning now to the celebration. We all talked and talked
and laughed and drank and wondered at the glory of our God, and at the love of
his son, just as the brothers did in the Red Lobster.
So in summary, in Long Island, the brothers were given no
physical food, no physical drink, no salvation food, no salvation drink, no new
spiritual food, they sat at no table and they uttered none of the words of
praise stipulated for the event and used by Jesus and the apostles at that
event. No one had the opportunity to praise God with their own words to their
brother during the festival. No one could discuss their gratitude to Jesus for
his sacrifice made that day. No one could share their joy with their brother
during that meeting. It was truly a dead celebration, a celebration for the
dead. Is it not aptly termed a Memorial?
Whereas in Chicago, we sat down at a table as Jesus did. We
were given physical food and drink as the apostles were. We ate and we drank the
bread and the wine of the appropriate covenants just as the apostles did. We
praised Jehovah in the words of David just as the apostles did. We praised Jesus
in our own words to our brothers just as the apostles did. We had new spiritual
understandings just as the apostles were given. We all enjoyed ourselves
tremendously just as the apostles did, other than when Jesus revealed the new
understanding about Judas. This was a living celebration, a celebration for the
living.
So here are the questions that are begged by this contrast...
If you visited Jesus house, would he give you no food?
Would he give you nothing to drink?
Would he show you emblems symbolising salvation but deny you access to them?
Would he refuse to sit down with you at the same table?
Would he deny you an opportunity to praise God in your own words?
Would he deny you an opportunity to praise God through scripture?
Would he fail to find any new understandings for you?
Is he the kind of priest that would serve up 50 year old spiritual food?
So which of our two celebrations then would you say that
Jesus attended?
Do the brothers at the Red Lobster not give us the answer?
Should the true church not be more appealing and more hospitable even than the
Red Lobster?
Of course you can rightly argue that our wonderfully accurate
and enjoyable and meaningful celebration was only held in one room in Chicago,
whereas your celebration was held in tens of thousands of rooms in hundreds of
countries all over the world. But that tragedy is why the holy spirit through 2
Chronicles 30, 1 Kings 18, Esther 5, Matthew 26:29, Mark 14:25 and the true
bible code etc. etc. has asked us to communicate with you with a view to
persuading you to celebrate this festival: “According to what is written” (2
Chronicles 30:5).
With all the examples in scripture of Kings who did not
listen to those sent by Jehovah to them, from Saul to Zedekiah, it would surely
be inexcusable for you not to grant us a hearing ear at the least on this vital
matter and agree to discuss it with us face to face. And why do we need yet
another example of a King who is supposed to be representing Jehovah but who
refuses to listen to instruction from the one whom he sends to him?
Are you truly prepared to run the risk of being blood guilty
for 6 million Jehovah’s Witnesses? Jesus commanded us to keep doing this
is remembrance of me. This being what he actually did on 33Nisan14. So
either we obey his commandment or we are idolaters and so are condemned,
breaking both his commandment and our covenant obligations. As Paul said: Keep
on making sure what is acceptable to the Lord (Ephesians 5:10).
Or in the words of Charles Taze Russell, quoted in the
Kingdom Proclaimers Book p49…
“Our work . . . has been to bring together these
long scattered fragments of truth and present them to the Lord’s people—not
as new, not as our own, but as the Lord’s. . . We
must disclaim any credit even for the finding and rearrangement of the jewels of
truth.” He further stated: “The work in which the Lord has been pleased to
use our humble talents has been less a work of origination than of
reconstruction, adjustment, harmonization.”
As sons of Russell by water baptism and by faith and by
church, and as sons of Jesus by covenant please consider this further fragment
of the Lord’s truth and reconstruct the Passover celebration accordingly.
May Jehovah bless his people and may you prove to be as
righteous as Hezekiah and as humble as Russell.
Agape Gordon
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