Letter to the Brethren: March 7, 2019

Within a few days of the official formation of the Continuing Church of God, we began to load videos on YouTube.

We have several channels we are using at YouTube currently:

CCOG Animations channel for animations.
Bible News Prophecy channel for sermonettes.
ContinuingCOG channel mainly for sermons.
CCOGAfrica channel mainly for messages from African pastors in African languages.

As many of you are aware, YouTube pulled, without notice, a sermon message from Steve Dupuie a few years ago. It took some time, but I was able to persuade YouTube that it did not violate its “community standards.”

Since then, however, YouTube has without notice, shut down various channels, including some religiously-oriented ones (though none of ours).

While we cannot prevent the coming ‘famine of the word’ (Amos 8:11-12), we also know that Bible teaches:

3 A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, But the simple pass on and are punished. (Proverbs 22:3)

Plus, Jesus taught:

16 Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

We can see problems coming in the future, and wish to take wise steps.

Therefore, last month I asked Bill Wedekind if he would start to upload our BibleNewsProphecy videos on to another platform called Vimeo.

We chose Vimeo for a few reasons:

1. It is not known to be as biased as YouTube (though that could certainly change).
2. It is not considered a “right wing” nor “left wing” platform, but “an open video platform.”
3. Vimeo is an ad-free platform.
4. Its Alexa ranking was vastly better than other platforms (except YouTube) we looked into.
5. It was the lowest cost option for an ad-free environment.

As far as costs go, I chose the lowest cost option that seemed to possibly work for us. But it has limitations as to how many videos we can load per week.

Bill Wedekind started doing the uploads a couple of weeks or so ago, and we expect to have over 100 sermonette videos there by the end of this week.

However, since we have almost 300 BibleNewsProphecy videos on YouTube, and I asked Bill Wedekind to start uploading from the oldest, it will take some time for all of them to be up. It will not be until the Spring that our most recent ones are expected to be up.

Now, we are NOT planning on dropping YouTube as we believe it gives us the best access and exposure for our videos. A recent video we put out–Pope Francis signs ‘one world religion’ document!–has had over 41,000 views in the past few weeks. Part of that success is because of the reach and familiarity that people around the world have with YouTube. That particular video also seems to have resulted in a 20% increase in subscribers to our BibleNewsProphecy YouTube channel. We gained more subscribers in the past several weeks than we have averaged in a typical year!

Yet, because YouTube has said that it wants to make it hard for people to find videos it considers promote “conspiracy theories” –even when they do not violate YouTube’s “community standards” (see Letter to the Brethren: January 31, 2019), YouTube remains a concern to us for many reasons.

One of which includes the fact that YouTube put a warning on one of our sermons last year (see Freemasonry, Armageddon, and Rome). Another is that we teach doctrines like the “millennium,” “the coming Beast,” “666,” and “one world religion” which either are (as far as YouTube is concerned), or could be considered to be, conspiracy theories. As a church, we do not wish to be entirely at the mercy of YouTube’s censors.

This does not mean that Vimeo holds to our views either, but being there already may help if YouTube pulls our BNP channel and makes it unavailable in the future.

We are also considering the possibility of other Vimeo channels, but since they (for our needs) are not free (and no, they are not expensive either) we plan to wait and see how this one channel goes with them for a while.

Anyway, our Vimeo channel is at the following link: https://vimeo.com/channels/biblenewsprophecy

Oscar Mediavilla Died

Oscar Mediavilla has had health problems for years, and died earlier this week. The funeral is planned for March 13th. Jay Chiang is planning on attending and conducting the service.

Oscar Mediavilla was a CCOG pioneer, being the first in the Philippines to become part of the Continuing Church of God.

Please pray that God will provide comfort to his family during their time of grief.

World News Items

Some have been posting that Canada is looking at tracking people’s ‘negative behavior’ is a way that reminds various ones of China’s social credit scoring system (see Police in Canada Are Tracking People’s ‘Negative’ Behavior In a ‘Risk’ Database’ and US Post Office Spying On You). Various aspects of human privacy are being lost, and the West is providing technology and governmental support to do so. And we know that a totalitarian system will be put in place in Europe under the Beast (cf. Revelation 13).

The US Department of Health and Human Services put forth an extension for its contract for researchers to make “humanized mice” with tissues from aborted human babies (HHS Extends Contract to Make ‘Humanized Mice’ With Aborted Baby Parts). Many of the world’s so-called scientists are getting sicker and sicker.

Outside the US, the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are working on another way to bypass the US dollar for a small amount of their trade called “BRICS Pay” (see ‘BRICS Pay’ and the Coming End of US Dollar Hegemony). While BRICS Pay is not enough to topple the US dollar, as more and more nations look for a while to bypass the dollar, they will conclude in the future that its time is done. That will not bode well for the US.

Suggested Sabbath Service

Here is a suggested Sabbath service for this week for our scattered brethren:

• 2-3 hymns (our songbook, The Bible Hymnal, contains the materials from the 1974 Bible Hymnal from the old WCG with new covers, plus ten additional hymns; there is also some Choral Accompaniment online).
• Opening prayer.
• Sermonette, which for most who receive this letter via email will be a recorded one. The one suggested for this week is: Zombie Deer Disease is Here! Are the 10 Plagues on Egypt Coming? Other sermonettes are available at the Bible News Prophecy channel.
• Announcements (if any; though for many it will be this letter) and one hymn.
• Sermon, which for most who receive this letter via email will be a recorded one. The one suggested for this week is: Really examine yourself before Passover. Other sermons are also available at the ContinuingCOG channel. Other sermons are also available at the ContinuingCOG channel.
• Final hymn.
• Closing prayer.

Note: If you have a slow internet connection, you can watch these by starting the video, then below it (and towards the right) look for an outline of a gear–if you click on that, it will allow the YouTube video to be played with lower video quality, but at least it will not stop often–you can select a quality as low as 144p. If your internet connection is still too slow and/or you prefer audio messages to audio-visuals ones, go to the YouTube link for the message, click on SHOW MORE related to the description. You will then see something that says, “Download MP3.” Below that is a link to an MP3 file. Most computers (and even some cellular telephones) will allow MP3 files to be downloaded and played. This is an option we have made available (but we are also looking into ways to improve that as well)–and, of course, we have written article options. Some people have found that if their internet connections are not fast enough, that they can simply listen to the messages that are found at the Bible News Prophecy online radio channel.

IN CASE YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A ‘LETTER TO THE BRETHREN’ FOR ANY WEEK, REMEMBER THAT THERE ARE MANY SERMON MESSAGES ON THE ContinuingCOGchannel AND MANY SERMONETTE MESSAGES ON THE Bible News Prophecy channel. There are also some messages at the CCOGAfrica channel.

Concluding Comments

A Psalmist wrote:

14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne;
Mercy and truth go before Your face.
15 Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound!
They walk, O Lord, in the light of Your countenance.
16 In Your name they rejoice all day long,
And in Your righteousness they are exalted.
17 For You are the glory of their strength,
And in Your favor our horn is exalted. (Psalm 89:14-17)

Brethren, God’s ways are righteous, merciful, and just, and based on truth.

Let us rejoice knowing that and walk in His light.

Sincerely,

Bob Thiel
Pastor and Overseer