January 8, 2014
Dear Norm and Shepherd’s Voice,
I finally got around to rereading Jim B. Peterson’s article on the Significance of Barley and Wheat. I also reread the rest of the articles and I would have to say this has been the best issue of Shepherd’s Voice ever!
There is one point at the end of Jim B. Peterson’s article that I don’t agree with. I believe the famine of the word (Amos chapter 8, especially verse 11) took place from Malachi to Messiah’s first coming. At the end of the age when the Beast reigns, the Two Witnesses will be preaching the truth and bringing woe on the Beast and his followers. When the Two Witnesses are killed, the Second Woe has passed. The Third Woe comes immediately and that is the end of the Beast’s reign. (The Beast’s 42 months = the Two Witnesses 1260 days).
Sure hope there are going to be more issues of the SV magazine! Spring 2013 is the last one we received. Thanks for the PaBC newsletter. May God bless your efforts to help the homeless.
The cornucopia, associated with the Harvest Home and Thanksgiving comes from classic Greek “mythology”. The “horn of plenty” is a representation of a goat God (demon) and a symbol of abundance. I remember every year at Thanksgiving time in grade school we had the cornucopia symbol decorating our classrooms. Mel and I have stopped keeping Thanksgiving because of this association. (Micah 3, especially verses 6 & 7)
Dear Jean,
We are glad Shepherds Voice Magazine is a blessing to you. We spend a lot of time in thought, study and prayer writing the articles. It is nice to see someone doing the same thing in reading them!
There certainly was a famine of the word of God between Malachi and the New Testament. The apocryphal books, especially 1 Maccabees, indicate that God was working among the people at times, but they also show people who were far away from God. Does Amos 8:11 refer to that time, the future time that Mr. Petersen mentioned or both? I don’t know for sure. If I felt I needed to know, I would ask God to show me. if you read the new Testament to see how they used Old Testament prophecy, they almost always pulled out specific verses—even parts of verses—and said that the Spirit had shown them that a specific prophecy was applying at their time. Our Fall 2013 article, “Need Prophets More than Prophecy”, addresses this issue.
If people are drawn away from God because of pagan practices mixed up with true practices, then they need to stop those things. The official Thanksgiving proclamations by our presidents that I have read do not mention the use of a cornucopia. They do honour the God of the Bible. I certainly did not have one at any Thanksgiving meal I have hosted. Simply because other people bring other religious symbols into a good attempt to honour God, does not invalidate those seeking to honour God. The “Feast of Dedication” or Hanukah was not a commanded Feast of the Old Testament, but Jesus attended it in John 10:22. Yes, various non-biblical elements have been added to that Feast. But it was a day commemorating the Jews physical deliverance by trust in God in difficult times. Jesus used the occasion to be in Jerusalem to explain He was not going to provide physical deliverance but spiritual deliverance. it can be a great time to honour God with friends and family who do not keep the biblical Feast days, but who will do so at Thanksgiving.