Ministers of Jesus Christ
Church of The Lord Jesus Christ
Assemblies of The Apostolic Faith
Atlanta, Georgia - USA
Apostle Dennis G. Smith, Pastor and Spiritual Overseer

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APOSTLE'S MESSAGE

 

Date: June 12, 2022
To all the Saints of God,
     Grace and peace be unto all the Saints of God around the World.  As this Coronavirus Pandemic continues, we are continually reminding the Saints of God that we are obeying the magistrates and following the guideline of the health and governmental authorities for the safety of all people. 
 
     Health authorities and governmental officials continue to strongly encourage people to wear face coverings in public gatherings and use social distancing, wash your hands, and get tested to help stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus.  In some places wearing face mask is mandatory in indoor public spaces.
 
 
     We are continuing limited indoor, in-person services with face mask, social distancing, temperature checks and Covid-19 testing. We are also continuing online services through Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube.   In-person Baptism and prayer service are available by attending our local service on site, attending our services on Zoom, or emailing your request to:
 
info@ministersofjesuschrist.com or prayerrequest@ministersofjesuschrist.com.
 
 
      As we obey the Magistrates, we have complete faith that God will continue to hear our prayers and provide a way for us through these uncertain times.
 
 Romans 13:2-4 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
 
 TITUS 3:1-2 Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men.
 
 
 This week’s encouraging words of growth focuses on:
 
“The Biblical Order of the Resurrections and the Coming of our Lord” (Tribulation)
Edited By Apostle Dennis G. Smith
 
 
     When we learn from the Apostle’s Doctrine who God is and we fully understand that Jesus Christ is the one and only God, then we can deal with the prophecies of the future with assurance about things to come.
 
     So, what can we say about God? First, there is one indivisible God with no distinction of persons.  Jesus Christ is God the Father for He is the Jehovah God of the Old Testament who manifested Himself in the flesh as the Son of God. The only God we will ever see in Heaven is Jesus Christ. The only God who is coming to take away or rapture the Church is the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the Almighty God who reveals the future to us because He knows all things.
 
Matthew 24:35 - 36 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Matthew 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
 
Mark 13:30 - 33 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. Mark 13:31 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. Mark 13:32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Mark 13:33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
 
1.The Tribulation period
 
Moreover, we believe that the distress upon the earth is the “beginning of sorrows” and will become more intense until there “Shall be a time of trouble, such as there never was since there was a nation even to this present time,” Matthews 24:3-8; Daniel 12:1,
 
Matthew 24:1 - 8 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. Matthew 24:2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. Matthew 24:3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?  Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. Matthew 24:5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. Matthew 24:6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. Matthew 24:7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. Matthew 24:8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
 
Daniel12:1- 3 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. Daniel12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Daniel12:3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.
 
Revelations 7:9 - 17 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; Revelations7:10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. Revelations7:11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, Revelations 7:12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen. Revelations7:13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?  Revelations 7:14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Revelations 7:15 Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. Revelations 7:16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. Revelations 7:17 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
 
     From these Scripture we can come to understand the future directly from the things spoken directly by the mouth of Lord Jesus Christ himself and spoken by him through his Apostles and Prophets.  We must all know the things that were spoken by God Almighty because there is a great division among so-called Christians believers as to the present happening in the world and the things to come.  Many Church outreach programs are built upon their outlook for the present and future events. And as a result their teachings about salvation and the world, may center on their understanding and outlook of future events.  Many books and tractural writings summarize their belief system of what is commonly called the Great Tribulation based on the way they examine past history and their expectation for the future.
 
     Most Christian eschatology which refer to their teaching about the things to come or future events, speak on a time of trouble referred to as the Tribulation period, as the period mentioned by the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 in the Olivet Discourse as a sign of what would occur during the Church Era or what some relate only to the time of the end describing the hardship, the affliction, and suffering occurring in daily life and the calamities caused by constant warfare between the nations of the world.
 
     Christians disagree over whether the Tribulation period will occur in the future and be a relatively short period of great hardship before the end of the world and Second Coming of Christ, sometimes called "Futurism".  Some believe that the Tribulation Period has already occurred, having happened in AD 70 when Roman legions laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed its temple sometimes called “Preterist” or began in 538 CE when papal Rome came to power which see the popes as being anti-Christs and their power growing stronger will intensify shortly before the end of the world, sometimes called "Historicist".
 
     The Christian futurist teach that in the future Tribulation or the things to come, the Great Tribulation is a relatively short period of time where everyone will experience worldwide hardships, persecution, disasters, famine, war, pain, and suffering, which will affect all of creation before the Second Coming takes place.
 
     Some pretribulationists believe that those who choose to follow God will be raptured before the tribulation, and thus escape it. On the other hand, posttribulationists believe Christians who are alive at the time of the Great Tribulation must endure the Great Tribulation and will receive great blessings.
 
     According to dispensationalists who hold the futurist view, the Tribulation is thought to occur before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in his gloried bodily form and during the End Times. In this view, the Tribulation will last seven prophetic Hebrew years (lasting 360 days each) in all, but the Great Tribulation will be the second half of the Tribulation period generally described as the last three and a half years. This seven-year period is considered to be the final week of Daniel's Prophecy of Seventy Weeks, found in Daniel 9th chapter. It is theorized that each week represents seven years, with the timetable beginning from Artaxerxes' order to rebuild the Second Temple in Jerusalem. After seven weeks and 62 weeks, the prophecy says that the messiah will be "cut off", which is taken to correspond to the death of Christ. This is seen as creating a break of indeterminate length in the timeline sometimes called the gap period which some may refer to as the Church age or Christian Era, with one week remaining to be fulfilled.
 
The time period for these beliefs is also based on other passages: in the Book of Daniel, "time, times, and half a time", interpreted as "three and a half years," and the Book of Revelation, "a thousand two hundred and threescore days" and "forty and two months" (the prophetic month averaging 30 days, hence 1260/30 = 42 months, or 3.5 years). The 1290 days of Daniel 12:11, (rather than the 1260 days of Revelation 11:3, is thought to be the result of either a simple intercalary leap month adjustment, or due to further calculations related to the prophecy, or due to an intermediate stage of time that is to prepare the world for the beginning of the millennial reign.
 
     The things that happen also called events, have differing viewpoints.  Among Futurists there are differing views about what will happen to Christians during the Tribulation:
 
     Pretribulationists believe that all righteous Christians (deceased and living) will be taken bodily up to Heaven (called the rapture) before the Tribulation begins.  According to this belief, every true Christian that has ever existed throughout the course of the entire Christian era will be instantaneously transformed into a perfect resurrected body, and will thus escape the trials of the Tribulation.    Those who become Christians after the rapture will live through (or perish during) the Tribulation. After the Tribulation, Christ will return to establish his Millennial Kingdom.
 
     Prewrath Tribulationists believe the rapture will occur during the Tribulation, halfway through or after, but before the seven bowls of the wrath of God.
 
     Midtribulationists believe that the rapture will occur halfway through the Tribulation, but before the worst part of it occurs. The seven-year period is divided into halves—the "beginning of sorrows" and the "Great Tribulation".
 
     Posttribulationists believe that Christians will not be taken up into Heaven for eternity, but will be received or gathered in the air by Christ, to descend together to establish the Kingdom of God on earth at the end of the Tribulation.
 
     In pretribulationism and midtribulationism, the rapture and the Second Coming of Christ are separate events, while in post-tribulationism the two events are identical, simultaneous, or not two events but are one and the same event. Another feature of the pre- and mid-tribulation beliefs is the idea that after the rapture, Christ will return for a third time (when also counting the first coming) to set up his kingdom on the earth.
 
     Generally the Catholic Church, the various Orthodox and Anglican Churches, and some older Protestant denominations do not use the term "rapture", and do not believe in the Millennium reign of Christ as a separate event following the Church Era, usually called amillennialism.  They believe that the millennium began on the Day of Pentecost with the birthday of the Church and is regarded as the initial period of the reign of Jesus Christ manifested in the life and activity of the Church that began with Pentecost.  Some of these may believe that the reign of Christ in the activity of the Church will continue to growth and will lead up to the messiah's eventual physical glorified bodily return, with the outcome being a single event at the end of the present time.
 
     In the Preterist view, the Tribulation took place in the past when Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in AD 70 during the end stages of the First Jewish–Roman War, and it only affected the Jewish people rather than all mankind. Christian preterists believe that the Tribulation was a divine judgment visited upon the Jews for their sins, including rejection of Jesus as the promised Messiah. It occurred entirely in the past, around AD 70 when the armed forces of the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. A preterist discussion of the Tribulation has its focus on the Gospels, in particular the prophetic passages in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, rather than on the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. (Preterists apply much of the symbolism in the Revelation to Rome, the Cæsars, and their persecution of Christians, rather than to the Tribulation upon the Jews.)
 
     The Preterist view the Lord Jesus Christ statement in Matthew 24:34 that "this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" to his similar warning to the Scribes and the Pharisees that their judgment would "come upon this generation", that is, during the first century rather than at a future time long after the Scribes and Pharisees had died. The destruction in AD 70 occurred within a 40-year generation from the time when Jesus gave that discourse. The judgment on the Jewish nation was executed by the Roman legions, "the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet." Since Matthew 24 begins with the Lord Jesus visiting the Jerusalem Temple and pronouncing that "there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down", preterists do not believe and can find no scripture which indicate that another Jewish temple will ever be built. The prophecies were all fulfilled on the then-existing temple that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke about and that was destroyed afterwards within that generation.
 
     The Historicist view applies Tribulation to the period known as "persecution of the saints" by the beast described in Daniel 7, Revelation 13. This is believed to have begun with the period after the "falling away" when papal Rome came to power for 1260 years from 538 to 1798 based on counting each day as one year. They believe that the Tribulation is not a future event, but it intensifies right at the end to a time such as never before.  Matthew's reference to "Great Tribulation" as parallel to Revelation 6:12-13, will reach a point that if it was not shortened even the just would not survive. 
 
     Historicists view prophecy fulfilled down through the centuries and rather than a single Antichrist to rule the earth during a future Tribulation period.        Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other Protestant Reformers saw the Antichrist as fulfilled in the papacy. The reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin and others saw the papacy's claim of temporal power over all secular governments and the autocratic character of the papal office as the falling away from the original faith founded by Jesus and the apostles, and challenged papal authority as it had deviated from scripture with its tradition and was a corruption from the early church. 
  
    Some historicists see the Tribulation of the Jews as beginning in AD 70 and continuing for centuries, covering the same time span as "the times of the Gentiles" during which "Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles." This view encompass not only the death of a million Jews at the hands of the Roman legions, but also the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
 
     Because the Lord Jesus Christ said that these are the beginnings of sorrows, Midtribulationists believe that the rapture will occur halfway through the Tribulation, but before the worst part of it occurs. The seven-year period is divided into halves—the "beginning of sorrows" and the "Great Tribulation".  
 
     The Apostolic Statement indicates moreover, we believe that the distress upon the earth is the “beginning of sorrows” and will become more intense until there “Shall be a time of trouble, such as there never was since there was a nation even to this present time,” and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. Daniel12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Matthews 24:3-8; Daniel 12:1, Daniel 7. Notice that despite their differences, all agree that the Tribulation Period has occurred, will occur, or is occurring and that there is a future coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in gloried bodily form. We donot know the day and the time but we wait patiently on the Lord God Jesus Christ who is our Father for only he knows the day and time.
 
We will continue with the Biblical Order and the Coming of Our Lord after Father’s Day…
 
May the Lord Bless you and Keep you and eternally hold you in the center of his will. 
May he open your understanding that you will come to know that you must repent of your sins and be baptized by immersion in water in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins. 
 
Then you must continue in prayer to God asking him for the Holy Ghost, calling on the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and waiting or tarrying until you receive the gift of the Holy Ghost with the sign following speaking with other tongues as the spirit gives you utterances.  
 
Then you must leave the principles of the doctrine and go on to perfection overcoming the love of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
 
Then you must continue steadfastly in the Apostle’s Doctrine remembering always that he that endures until the End, the same shall be saved.  In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ who is God Almighty. Amen
 
With perfect love,
Apostle Dennis G. Smith
  
The online service Zoom link is sent out each Sunday at 9:50 am for Eternal Life Church of the Living God and 11:00 am for the general Ministers of Jesus Christ Church services to the Saints and friends who sent in email addresses.  If you wish to worship with us, please send you email address to: info@mininstersof Jesuschrist.com and we will email you a link to join the service.  We start the zoom services 10 am each Sunday morning and 7:30 pm each Thursday Evening for Bible Study and Auxiliary meetings. 
 
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 ONGOING GUIDANCE 
• Vaccination remains the most effective protection against COVID-19
• Practice social distancing
• Frequently wash hands
• Frequent cleaning of public and high touch areas
 
 
Social Distancing guidelines:
• Social distancing means staying away from close contact in public spaces. It includes actions like staying out of places where lots of people gather and maintaining distance — approximately 6 feet — from others.
• Social distancing also includes minimizing contact with people when possible, limiting nonessential travel, working from home, and minimizing social gatherings.
• All people should practice social distancing — not just those who are seriously ill or at high risk.
• Social distancing is a proven way to slow the spread of pandemics.
 
When to Wear a Mask:
Those who are staying home and have no close contact with people who are infected with COIVID-19 do not need a mask most of the time. However, wearing a nonmedical or homemade mask may be helpful in certain situations or for certain populations. Wear a Mask when:
• Shopping at essential businesses, like grocery stores or pharmacies.
• While visiting your health care provider.
• Traveling on public transportation.
• Interacting with customers/clients at essential businesses.
• When feeling sick, coughing, or sneezing.
• In all public spaces indoors and outdoors.
 
Because homemade masks protect everyone else from the droplets created by the wearer, it is important that as many people as possible wear these masks when leaving their homes. This helps prevent those who may be infectious but are only mildly symptomatic or not symptomatic from spreading the virus to others in the community.
 
Everyone should remember the phrase: “My mask protects you; your mask protects me.” By increasing the overall number of people who are containing their coughs, sneezes, and other droplets, it will help us control the overall spread of the virus.