When the Worldwide Church of God sold the Pasadena property the lower campus was sold to Maranatha High School. It is an upscale college prep school that has an excellent reputation for its classes and cost. Yearly tuition is over $17,000.00.
When they took over the property it was in a sad state of disrepair. Maranatha dumped millions of dollars into gutting and rebuilding Grove Terrace from the inside out into a state of the art classroom building. The track was resurfaced and extended into a regulation football field and stadium lights installed. Major repairs were done to the Student Center also.
They take great pride in the property and have a waiting list for students to attend it.
They take the name Maranatha from the Bible.
This is all good if you are a strong believer in scripture. It is a name that serves them well at the school.
Maranatha (either מרנא תא: maranâ' thâ' or מרן אתא: maran 'athâ' ) is an Aramaic word occurring twice in the New Testament (see Aramaic of Jesus) and also in the Didache which is part of the Apostolic Fathers' collection. It is transliterated into Greek letters rather than translated, and is found at the end of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor 16:22) . The NRSV translates it as: "Our Lord, come!" but notes that it could also be translated as: "Our Lord has come"; the NIV translates: "Come, O Lord"; the NAB notes:
The phrase may have been used as a greeting between Early Christians,[1] and it is possibly in this way that it was used by the Apostle Paul.
- "As understood here ("O Lord, come!"), it is a prayer for the early return of Christ. If the Aramaic words are divided differently (Maran atha, "Our Lord has come"), it becomes a credal declaration. The former interpretation is supported by what appears to be a Greek equivalent of this acclamation in Book of Revelation 22:20 "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!""
Then, Armstrongism enters the picture. This was sent to me by a person tonight. They said it was on Facebook. Everything in Armstrongism has to be a conspiracy or have some hidden meaning behind it.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about Maranatha and anathema:
The original Greek meaning of "anathema", a gift or sacrifice to God, leads to the interpretation that "Anathema Maranatha" in a New Testament context could mean "a gift to God at the coming of our Lord." John Wesley in his Notes on the Bible comments that, "It seems to have been customary with the Jews of that age, when they had pronounced any man an Anathema, to add the Syriac expression, Maran - atha, that is, "The Lord cometh;" namely, to execute vengeance upon him." The Catholic Encyclopedia states, "Anathema signifies also to be overwhelmed with maledictions... At an early date the Church adopted the word anathema to signify the exclusion of a sinner from the society of the faithful; but the anathema was pronounced chiefly against heretics." The negative understanding of maranatha began to die out by the late 19th Century; Jamiesen, Fausset and Brown's commentary of 1871 separates Maranatha from anathema in the same way as modern scholars. However the traditional interpretation is still occasionally found among some Christians today.
It is quit obvious that this person does not have any idea what he is talking about. Plus, it is quit obvious that this person still believes that the College had spiritual significance and that God removed his presence from the property when the so called apostasy happened. So many Armstrongites look at the property still as a sacred place.
2 comments:
Normally, you'd think that if a philosophy required the usage of hidden meanings to justify itself, or to make sense of its teachings, then that philosophy was the proverbial house built on sand. There always was a higher percentage of these hidden "truths" or improbably conspiracy theories in Armstrongism, a fact which would have been very telling had we allowed it to be.
Back in 1975 when I left, I chanced upon a newspaper classified ad placed by no doubt by someone in the emerging "Jesus Movement" who was familiar with the term Maranatha. The word appeared literally overnight and spread throughout Southern California, so it was very difficult to avoid this new vocabulary word. The ad I read indicated that the placer had an intimate knowledge of the Holy Spirit, and His fruits. Had the Armstrong problem not totally prejudiced me against belief and all things spiritual or religious, I probably would have been drawn to respond to the ad.
I found it ironic in a very pleasant way that this word is now present on the very campus where I had been educated in the ways of a toxic cult which actually repudiates and downplays some of the fruits of the Holy Spirit which are enumerated and extolled in the writings of the apostles. To my way of thinking, Jesus Christ has actually reserved and purified a part of the old AC campus for Himself, and all that the remaining cultic stalwarts can do is rely on hidden meanings and secret conspiracy theories to combat the obvious in their own minds.
BB
The Pasadena campus, beautiful though it is/was, was possible because of the incomprehensible millions extracted from members through the tithing doctrine. When you're wallowing in the ridiculously deep pockets that HWA, GTA & Co. enjoyed for so many years, just about anything's possible. So they built and built and manicured and planted and couldn't spend the money fast enough.
The sad truth was that they also wasted money as badly as the federal government does. Overstaffed departments were given oversized budgets, and they knew better than to leave any surplus at the end of the fiscal year. But when you're budgeting based on percentages, it's easy to get fat and sassy.
When things changed and the Joe Jr. era of WCG/GCI decided it was all superfluous -- an accurate determination -- the campus became a valuable piece of real estate.
They found a buyer, and that was that. Nothing was prophesied. Nothing was predetermined. Hundreds of millions -- billions? -- of dollars streamed through that place over the years, and little was left to show for it.
Now one can only hope that some sensibility has entered into its management, but then, it's hard to care much one way or the other.
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