Inspiring Music and Great Messages!

Everyone arrived safely at the feast and there were 84 on the opening Night service. The Theme of the feast this year is "Going on to Perfection!". Posted below is the opening welcoming message from the feast coordinator, Oludare Akinbo as well as a special music titled "The Name Of The Lord Shall be Exalted"

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Feast Theme: Going on to Perfection

Mr. and Mrs Oludare Akinbo, Festival 2014 Coordinators. 

God began to add people to be part of His household, The Church Of God, almost 6,000 years ago starting with righteous Abel (Matthew 23:25), various prophets, on to the Apostles and believers ever since. We belong to that select few in this age and time, and so we are related by being God’s Children.

^“19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” Ephesians 2:19-20

Satan, the enemy of God’s people, has always been working and scheming to destroy the Church of God. He started by killing Abel, and he thought he was accomplishing anything by having our Lord Jesus Christ killed, not knowing it was within the plan of God all along. He has never stopped trying to destroy the members of God’s Church ever since.  He is doomed to fail!  Christ declared to us a resounding surefire promise in Matthew 16:18

^“18 … on this rock [referring to Himself, being THE ROCK OF AGES], I will build my church, and the gates of Hades^[b] [the grave] will not overcome it.”

This implies that there will be attempts to destroy the Church of God. This WILL NOT succeed! There will ALWAYS be, on this earth, those who are faithful and committed to doing the WILL of The Father regardless of whatever the Devil throws at them. He would provide the encouragement, strength and power needed to resist and stand firm.

Satan will use our desires as well as persecution and trails from family, friends, work, various circumstances and whatever form his brilliant, cunning and twisted mind can dream up, to challenge us, attempt to frustrate, discourage, sow seeds of doubt, anger, malice, envy, enmity, selfishness, pride and sin in us.

Knowing this brethren, at this stage in the events leading to the coming of our Lord and Savior, we should therefore be “…leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, [and] let us go on to perfection…” (Hebrews 6:1)

Going on to perfection goes beyond keeping the Holy and Righteous Laws of God. It requires that we be willing to give up anything and everything for the Joy and privilege of following our Lord and Master.

See the principle here as Christ laid it out to a man who claims to know, and be keeping from his youth the commandments of that Jesus Christ outlined for him:

²¹ Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

To avoid making the same choice this man made, we need to move from still struggling with the basic principles of our calling, and be going on to perfection.

Apostle Peter outlined a way to help us achieve this and I hope we can take it to heart and start growing in doing these:

⁵ But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, ⁶ to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, ⁷ to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. ⁸ For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:5-8 

So, brethren, LET US START PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION TO OUR GROWTH IN CHRIST, GOING ON TO PERFECTION….

Have a wonderful, exciting and inspiring feast, full of joy, fun, fellowship, feasting, peace in our Lord and God, and hope for an assured tomorrow.

Hag Sameach!

Lots of Fun and Inspiring Messages

The feast festivities and fun continued from the after the 1st Holy Day with lots of Inspiring messages from the Bible Studies, Sermonettes, Sermons etc. We were unable to connect and listen to the President's feast message due to poor internet connectivity and also unable to download it because even the low quality video was 800MB in size! Everyone missed hearing the message but I intend to download it from home (will take a chunk of time still though, and data bandwidth) and show it later on in the congregations. 

Jelly Comes to Nigeria FOT 2014

The fellowship and bonding was superb and uplifting. So much so we got Mrs Laura Kersey of the Spokane Congregation willing to come and assist during the Youth Camp next year as a youth corps volunteer! 

Since we all are staying in a single hotel complex, we all ate our Lunch and Dinner together. Attached are pictures from our sports day, excursion with the Teens to a Wildlife Park in a nearby Private University, our combined men's and ladies's day club program held at the feast this year to have our extended spiritual family members at the feast from America enjoy the day with us. 

Combined Lagos Men's and Ladies's Day at FOT 2014

Our talent and family fun day was so exciting and fun filled, enriched in the refreshments by donations made by sister congregations in the USA and individual friends of the Nigerian family of God. The singles group in the churches in Nigeria also contributed by providing three goats that were used as part of the refreshments served during the uplifting and talent riddled talent show/family fun day. 

96 brethren (including three Americans) from all over Nigeria at FOT 2014

Greetings from JABU Resort, Ondo State, Nigeria where 96 brethren from all over Nigeria, with 3 international family members (they certainly may be visiting and keeping the feast with us, but they are family family in the household of our Father and not visitors!) from the USA are rejoicing together, before the Almighty God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. 

There is excitement and a wonderful sense of Joy Peace and Unity as we all started the feast three days ago. Sermons have been inspiring and the fellowship wonderful. 

Mark Mickelson, our brother, friend and senior pastor for West Africa, from Spokane  arrived in Lagos 2nd of October, a week ahead of the feast of Tabernacles and the feast of the Eight Day. He enjoyed a relaxed night and fellowship with my family and on Saturday, the Day of Atonement, we drove an hour and half through the Nigeria-Rep of Benin border to spend the day in fellowship and serve the family of God in Cotonou.  It was an interesting journey as always, with all the extortion of money to stamp passports and the scenario impressed me more with the world's need for the Kingdom of God, and I look forward to a time when the Devil, the enemy of man and all God's people would be bound and restrained and the world would indeed be at one with God the Father. 

On Monday evening, Mrs Mickelson and Laura Kersey arrived safely to Nigeria. It was Laura's first visit to the giant of Africa. On tuesday, 7th, we left a day early to the feast site, a 3 1/2 hour drive through various towns and countryside. It was a relief to finally arrive at the feast site and settle in to a wonderful 8 days of fellowship, feasting and being encouraged, educated, inspired, edified and generally fed with the word of God.