Saturday, March 23, 2013

Prophet Thiel: Will Obama Be The U.S. President That Causes My Church To Flee To Petra?



The non-ordained self-appointed prophet Thiel is all in atwitter today about President Obama visiting Petra.  The best part about his visit is that a "gentile," in eyes of many Armstrongites, made it to Petra before the chosen church did.  That really must tick off some of them!

The non-ordained prophet writes:

US President Barack Obama visited Petra as part of his Middle East tour:
PETRA, Jordan | Sat Mar 23, 2013
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama marveled at the sights of Jordan’s ancient city of Petra on Saturday as he wrapped up a four-day Middle East tour by setting aside weighty diplomatic matters and playing tourist for a day.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/23/us-usa-mideast-obama-idUSBRE92M02U20130323
Many of us in the Church of God have long felt that it is possible that Petra in Jordan could be the place that God will protect the Philadelphia Christians during the time of the Great Tribulation (cf. Revelation 3:10). 

Its weird that almost eighty years down the line and Armstrongism is still harping on Petra after one failed prophecy after another.

Like all good prophets, real ones and fake ones, Thiel sets out to scare his members, again.  Obama or another president will cause things to happen that forces the Continuing Ed Church of God to hightail it over to Petra.  As if any Muslim nation is going to open their doors to a bunch of wacky cultists wanting to move there.  Oh, but I forgot.  The king of Jordan was so impressed by Herbert Armstrong that he will bend over backwards and welcome the COG folks with open arms.  Bob, his family and a few henchmen will stay outside Petra in the Marriott while the peons have to struggle to survive inside.

It is interesting that the US president visited Petra as it will be partially policies of leaders like US presidents that will contribute to the need for Philadelphia Christians to flee to a place like Jordan (sin is the actual cause, but it leads to debt and debt-increasing policies).  The amount of US debt increased significantly under the last US President Bush and the current US President Obama.

50 comments:

Michael said...

Ah yes,
The famed place of safety, characteristically located in one of the most war prone regions in the world!
:-)

Anonymous said...

Petra is a tourist destination. I am so sure that the place of safety is going to be a tourist destination. If it were, why couldn't it be Hawaii? Oh, and I am so sure there is even going to be a place of safety in the first place. Not.

Velvet said...

I don't think Petra was preached over the whole span of time of the Church? ISTR reading a blog post somewhere (probably deleted now, as these things often are) saying that it only really started being pushed in the 1970s?

I won't say it's not going to happen for sure (or that it won't be Petra -- but I will say, I highly, highly, highly doubt that), but I don't believe "the end" is going to happen "in this generation" (3 generations on, it's kind of hard to say that with a straight face anymore). Which puts me at odds with 99.99999% of the splinter groups, and even with some of the Evangelicals in the Church!

As I believe the teaching that the Jews have preserved the Oracles of God, we have many long years yet, before "the time of the end" considering that we are only in Tevet 5774, according to the Jewish calendar (or Tevet 5775, if you go by the Biblical calendar, which pegged "the beginning of the year" as March 11 this year). If you believe in God's 7,000 year plan for mankind, that is. (I do.)

Going by what Armstrong said in some of his last sermons and Feast transmissions towards the end of his life, I wouldn't say he had come to that understanding yet, but I know he did say, a lot, that he regretted saying things would happen in a few years, etc. I recall him saying he just wanted the Kingdom to come so badly, that he was over-enthusiastic.

Whether or not that's true, well, that's for God to judge. Which WILL happen, regardless to the date.

Retired Prof said...

[Sin] "leads to debt and debt-increasing policies," according to Thiel.

Stunning hypothesis! If he firmly establishes a clear cause-and-effect relation between sin and debt that affects economies of different types in different periods of history, he should be a Nobel Prize candidate.

However, I suspect that once as an impressionable teenager not paying full attention to a sermon, he thought he heard the preacher say "The wages of sin is debt."

Anonymous said...

Don't you all wonder when some leader of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong is going to go all "Jonestown" on us? I've been concerned about that since November 1978.

I actually have less concern now since it would only be natural selection culling off the shallow end of the gene pool.

But still....

The humanity of it all.

Could Thiel be the one to pull it off?

Don't drink the Coolaid.

And don't bother with your passport, since the economy here seems to be getting better.

"The wages of sin is debt." Ha! Good one, Retired Prof! It's been around for awhile, but thanks for the retro!

Unknown said...

The Petra idea always bummed me out for I figured that HWA would be living in that cool looking "Treasury Building" (the one that Obama is in front of) and I would be stuck in one of those burial caves on the windy sided hill.

The concept was that perhaps 144,000 people would be there. I did some math on this, and calculated that if each person used just one roll of toilet paper per week, for 3.5 years, that this would equal 150 full train freight cars worth of toilet paper! (honest true calculation!)

I doubt that there would be a well organized transportation network during the tribulation, so the idea of not having (at least) toilet paper for 3.5 years kind of bummed me out on the idea.

Someone told me that the Bedouins use fine sand instead of paper. That would be a culture shock for all of us , Im quite sure. Petra would be such a shock to the system for most westerners, to be there that it would likely kill us all off in about a year.

So how is this for a better, more palatable, super SCI-FI fantasy... Petra is indeed the "Place of Safety" but it is DEEPLY UNDERGROUND at the site, complete with super high rise condos, air conditioning, salad bars, fresh purified water, mermaids, dichondra parks AND....

TOILET PAPER!

(lol!)

Joe Moeller
Cody, WY

Unknown said...

Well all is not lost!

There is now a SBARRO'S PIZZA at Petra! (True!)
http://sbarro.com/locations/locations.php

So at least we will be able to order a double cheese pizza on a cold windy night.

I wonder if they will change the menu to UNLEAVENED PIZZA during the days of UB? A good business always considers the needs of it's clientele!

Joe Moeller
Cody, WY

Retired Prof said...

Douglas Becker reminds us that my "death/debt" joke has "been around for awhile, but thanks for the retro!"

Okay, Douglas, I'm busted.

I mentally file old punch lines with tabs on them so I can pull them out when a set-up occurs. I once stored a sort of weak joke for more than twenty-five years before an opportunity came up to use it. The original set-up was weak because it had to be laboriously constructed. The new one arose spontaneously, so it worked far better. None of the other people in the conversation had ever heard it before, so they thought I was brilliantly inventive, whereas I was merely compulsively retentive.

Anonymous said...

Retired Prof: Great minds think alike -- years of Reader's Digest bon mots, the New Yorker cartoons and stories from various places all stored away waiting for the moment to pounce.

But be warned!

I have some true originals in my arsenal!

Some of my best ones have been stolen by others, like "herding cats", included in my book "Assertive Incompetence". Imagine my shock when I heard it used on Will and Grace and then, of all things, seeing the EDS ad on TV!

Stolen! Stolen, I say!

Velvet said...

"Don't you all wonder when some leader of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong is going to go all "Jonestown" on us? I've been concerned about that since November 1978."

I was worried about that, leading up to Witless Weinland's first failed timeline, in 2008; if anything, his flippant attitude after its complete failure (his April 17, 2008 sermon from "Jerusalem" notwithstanding), taught me that there is NO chance, zero, zip, zilch, of the leaders of the major splinters, doing this; quite frankly, they know which side their bread is buttered on, and it does not seem likely they would cut off their noses to spite their faces.

Some of the "true believer" smaller splinter group leaders might be like this...but going on twenty years after the captivity of the Church to mystery Babylon, we haven't seen it yet. Surely, if that were any kind of incipient danger, we would have seen that already? By your own admission, Douglas, you have been worried about it since 1978...but nothing has happened.

(Waco doesn't count. Koresh was never a member of the Church, they were an SDA splinter of another SDA splinter.)

The closest one I think of, is the serial killer in Montreal in the mid-80s (I forget his name now) --- but he pretty much departed from anything the Church taught right away, when he set himself up as a Manson-like figure. He did join the Church, but left, according to all reports. I highly doubt the Church had anything but a marginal influence on him, as it would have been sliding down the slippery slope, by that point.

I do recall ministers from the pulpit urging members to tell friends and family who accused us of being in a cult, that we had the free will choice to be where we were, and do what we wanted (I understand this is a reversal of what Armstrong was preaching in the '40s and '50s about "being drafted by God") and that we were NOTHING like Jonestown.

Plus, we never had a lot of the risk factors for Jonestown-like events; we (mostly) all held jobs, went to school, and lived wherever we lived, NOT communally (and often not even close together), and the idea that suicide was self-murder, thereby breaking one of the ten commandments, was drummed into all of us from a fairly early age.

I am not saying it is outside the realm of possibility; but the likelihood does not seem higher because of the teachings of the Church, nor even where the splinter groups have departed from same, in my opinion.

Velvet said...

"Don't you all wonder when some leader of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong is going to go all "Jonestown" on us? I've been concerned about that since November 1978."

I was worried about that, leading up to Witless Weinland's first failed timeline, in 2008; if anything, his flippant attitude after its complete failure (his April 17, 2008 sermon from "Jerusalem" notwithstanding), taught me that there is NO chance, zero, zip, zilch, of the leaders of the major splinters, doing this; quite frankly, they know which side their bread is buttered on, and it does not seem likely they would cut off their noses to spite their faces.

Some of the "true believer" smaller splinter group leaders might be like this...but going on twenty years after the captivity of the Church to mystery Babylon, we haven't seen it yet. Surely, if that were any kind of incipient danger, we would have seen that already? By your own admission, Douglas, you have been worried about it since 1978...but nothing has happened.

(Waco doesn't count. Koresh was never a member of the Church, they were an SDA splinter of another SDA splinter.)

The closest one I think of, is the serial killer in Montreal in the mid-80s (I forget his name now) --- but he pretty much departed from anything the Church taught right away, when he set himself up as a Manson-like figure. He did join the Church, but left, according to all reports. I highly doubt the Church had anything but a marginal influence on him, as it would have been sliding down the slippery slope, by that point.

I do recall ministers from the pulpit urging members to tell friends and family who accused us of being in a cult, that we had the free will choice to be where we were, and do what we wanted (I understand this is a reversal of what Armstrong was preaching in the '40s and '50s about "being drafted by God") and that we were NOTHING like Jonestown.

Plus, we never had a lot of the risk factors for Jonestown-like events; we (mostly) all held jobs, went to school, and lived wherever we lived, NOT communally (and often not even close together), and the idea that suicide was self-murder, thereby breaking one of the ten commandments, was drummed into all of us from a fairly early age.

I am not saying it is outside the realm of possibility; but the likelihood does not seem higher because of the teachings of the Church, nor even where the splinter groups have departed from same, in my opinion.

Velvet said...

"years of Reader's Digest bon mots, the New Yorker cartoons and stories from various places all stored away waiting for the moment to pounce."

Please, gentlemen, no, the sermons in the Church are just this short of being completely intolerable, as it is. ;-)

What was it with the Reader's Digest jokes they always told, I wonder? FWIW, they tend to tell vapid jokes and bad one-liners from other worldly magazines, these days, though I'm sure if I still read RD, I would see they were still quoting from it a lot.

I gave up on RD some years ago (I was a staunch atheist by that point), when the Ellen White-worship became WAY more blatant than it had been, and I looked into the history and origins of the magazine. And this was "the door God opened for the Gospel"?? Advertising in some SDA propaganda manual???

Charming.

Anonymous said...

Velvet, I had dismissed it until the latest rash of crazies, such as Thiel.

Yes, the psychopaths know better than to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

It's the psychotic that have the most potential.

And you never know, if an ego such as Pack ever crashed with a psychotic break, with his following it is possible.

Likely?

Maybe 50 / 50 over all with the whole bunch of them, but the risk factor in the larger ones is much less.

Best insurance?

Don't be a part of it.

Corky said...

The Australian "outback"! That's the place to go for safety (take some water with you) and there's plenty of room.

Lake of Fire Church of God said...

From my Sabbath Services Notebook recorded on December 7, 1968 before a combined service of the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. WCG congregations at a dingy old meeting hall on Eastern Avenue in Baltimore, Md.:

God’s people are different from society. The only way you can be out of a society is for God to take you out….God has to take us to a place (of safety) to mold us into the right society. “There will be no rebels in the World Tomorrow. By the end of the work, all the people who stayed loyal will be taken to a place of safety”. - Gerald Waterhouse

Richard

Corky said...

Velvet said...
I do recall ministers from the pulpit urging members to tell friends and family who accused us of being in a cult, that we had the free will choice to be where we were, and do what we wanted...

Haven't you ever noticed that it's only cults who have to do that? Other church's members don't need to tell friends and family any such thing as that because it's normal.

Is it too hard to decipher what that means? That's okay, JW's and numerous other cults have to do the same thing and they don't get it either.

Assistant Deacon said...

Velvet, in your first comment, did you actually use Armstrong and understanding in the same sentence?

Have you not been paying attention? Lol

Anonymous said...

Douglas,

I first heard the term "herding cats" at a conference in January, 1989. The speaker credited it to a department head at the University of Minnesota.

Does your usage date before that?

Velvet said...

"It's the psychotic that have the most potential.

And you never know, if an ego such as Pack ever crashed with a psychotic break, with his following it is possible."

Douglas,

Anything is possible; uncertainty being the one certainty of life, etc. ;-)

I honestly don't think "the sheeple" in large part, are (or were) as "brainwashed" as these websites like to make out -- I find it especially hilarious that sites like the "Exit & Support Network" scream the loudest about it, but they want their readers to subscribe to their brainwashing, without question.

In my experience, members tended to run the gamut -- from unquestioning member who obeyed the minister doggedly, to everyone's detriment, but most especially their own, to those who tended to think for themselves (As we were encouraged to -- "Prove all things" being the byword of the Church when I was growing up), to those who complained incessantly about the Church...but oddly, they refused to leave.

I can't think of any members I knew, back in the day, who would have followed any minister I had contact with, into any kind of Jonestown scenario.

I also did not know any ministers, psychotic break or not, who would have ever made the attempt.

Velvet said...

"Gerald Waterhouse"

*Mythbusters voice* "Well, THERE'S your problem!"

No big surprise Waterhouse was pushing this in '68. I recall him spinning detailed mirages of the place in the '80s as well. Not that any of us really believed him; and after he started in on the same idol-worship of Senior Tkach, that made us so uncomfortable when he did it with Armstrong, I think for most of us at that point, the jig was up.

Did anyone actually, really and truly, take Waterhouse seriously? I mean, really?? Because no one I knew did!

Velvet said...

"Other church's members don't need to tell friends and family any such thing...."

...because friends and family don't tell members of major world religions they are brainwashed. Well, most of them don't, anyway. The atheists do, regardless of what religion they follow.

You also haven't refuted the point that we WERE free to leave the Church, any time we wanted to...not that any of us would have wanted to, mind you. But the majority of us believed it, when Armstrong told us God's gift to man was our free will ability to choose.

Velvet said...

"Velvet, in your first comment, did you actually use Armstrong and understanding in the same sentence?"

I said, I do not believe he (Armstrong) had come to that understanding (of the Jewish calendar) yet.

So, essentially what I said was, Herbert Armstrong did not understand that doctrinal point, in my opinion.

I'm sorry, what were you saying about not paying attention? You'd better watch your step, Assistant Deacon, or Gary will bust you down to shining Head Usher's shoes! ;-) (Note my humour.)

Velvet said...

....all these comments, and not one of us has mentioned Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? I am disappointed in us, brethren!

Anonymous said...

I first heard the term "herding cats" at a conference in January, 1989. The speaker credited it to a department head at the University of Minnesota.

Does your usage date before that?


1979.

Anonymous said...

Bob is just living in the past, ancient past of the the old covenant days. Worse still is he is disobeying Christ's command to love his neighbor. Instead he spreads hates to all other Christians who refuse to follow his church and his outdated ways. I really feel sad for this poor misguided man.

Anonymous said...

Exactly, V. My question was prompted by your use of the word yet.

Implies that understanding might logically follow at some point for HWA. But based on what? Previous "understanding?" Forgive me if I speak for most here when I suggest that was non-existent.

Assistant Deacon said...

Sorry, that was me just then.

Corky said...

Velvet said...
You also haven't refuted the point that we WERE free to leave the Church, any time we wanted to

Of course you were free to leave IF you were willing to accept the consequences of "the second death" by being tossed into the lake of fire and of probably meeting some horrible end to this life soon after leaving and having all your friends and family in the cult turn their backs on you.

But mostly, you are not actually free to leave until you free your mind of those false consequences and quit being afraid of the curses that they claim will happen to you when you leave.

And yeah, I think religious people are brainwashed. Being told from childhood that gods, angels and demons exist as if it is a fact when the fact is that there is no evidence for any of them.

Corky said...

Oh, and I almost forgot the consequence of having to suffer through the apocalypse IF you're lucky enough to survive it.

Anonymous said...

It's now about time for the Passover to begin for the ACoGs back East.

Wonder how Conald Swineland is doing. Will Prison grape juice substitute for wine? The footwashing ceremony might be interesting. Good luck getting unleavened bread for 7 days in Prison. So hard to check those labels.

Life can get so complicated sometimes.

Velvet said...

"Exactly, V. My question was prompted by your use of the word yet.

Implies that understanding might logically follow at some point for HWA."

My theory at this point in my life is that understanding might very well follow for all of us, at some point.

Velvet said...

"Of course you were free to leave IF you were willing to accept the consequences of "the second death" by being tossed into the lake of fire and of probably meeting some horrible end to this life soon after leaving and having all your friends and family in the cult turn their backs on you."

Which is why I added, "Not that any of us would have wanted to."

It was not my experience that ministers tended to hold those consequences over our heads, however. We certainly held those consequences over our own heads, but that was one of the mistakes, IMO.

Velvet said...

"It's now about time for the Passover to begin for the ACoGs back East."

Long past, for the congregation here. Not that I attended. I got a lot of pressure to, though. *shrug* Far cry from how it used to be, anyway.

I am reasonably certain, based on his behaviour in the past, Witless Weinland will find some justification to the PKGers for why he can't keep DoUB in Club Fed.

Wouldn't surprise me, if he eats whatever is set before him, too. Pork included.

Corky said...

Velvet said...
It was not my experience that ministers tended to hold those consequences over our heads, however. We certainly held those consequences over our own heads, but that was one of the mistakes, IMO.

That's exactly what every member of a cult says in every cult everywhere. It changes in perspective when you escape though.

Anonymous said...

"It was not my experience that ministers tended to hold those consequences over our heads..."

It was the experience of the overwhelming majority of members.
I remember Herbie pounding the lectern and shaking his jowls as he screamed, "...if YOU want to go to the Lake of Fire!"

What a little asshole he was!

He spawned a cottage industry of lots of splinters(such as UCG, etc) who are like-minded and whose headquarters' prominently display images of their "asshole-guru' Herbie.

Anonymous said...

Good luck if you can get out of a splinter cult today without the minister holding that over your head. My pastor certainly did when I left.

Retired Prof said...

I tried to avoid conversations with ministers after dropping out of Ambassador College. I had never requested baptism because my doubts (spawned by the absurdity of both the Bible as a whole and the Radio Church of God interpretations of it) grew too severe too quickly.

However, one of my fellow students came to visit me after I returned home and tried to persuade me to return. His argument included the prospect of my second death, which he would mercifully be able to delete from his memory completely when he became a spirit being.

I still attended church for a while to avoid disappointing family members, and another fellow student who was assigned to our congregation on his semester as a ministerial assistant expressed his belief that attending Ambassador for a school year represented my calling, my single chance to accept eternal life. He told me he feared if I didn't return I was bound for the lake of fire. He was genuinely distressed about the fate he thought was in store for me.

I could face my fate with equanimity then, and I still can. The idea that a just and merciful god would wake me from peaceful death just to kill me again is completely unbelievable.

These are the only anecdotes I've got. I can't say how often ministers or peers held threats over other congregation members' heads or how seriously other lay members put themselves in thrall.

RSK said...

But I thought the suddenly-alive egrets in front of Harvest Rock's auditorium were going to cause the church to be taken to Petra.

Byker Bob said...

HWA, back in the late '60s and early '70s, was openly optimistic in his sermons at Pasadena HQ concerning his friendship with King Hussein of Jordan. He opined that such an ally amongst the Arabs could end up facillitating the WCG's usage of Petra as a place of safety during the trib.

What I've learned over the past year is that Petra as a place of safety was not an original concept with Armstrong. During the '20s or '30s, there was a very well known evangelist who stocked all of the old stone buildings and caves with King James Bibles. Why? Well, he thought that after the Christians were raptured, there had to be some method by which a remnant from the Jews was preserved, and prepared for the return of Jesus Christ. The Bibles were for the Jews to study, leading to their acceptance of Jesus Christ, to fulfill the prophecy stating that Jesus would return when His people cried out for Him. This "crying out" is something that is very important to mainstream Christians, and there are groups currently over in Israel attempting to provide education leading up to it.

BB

Anonymous said...

That kind of craziness makes perfect sense, assuming you actually believe the future of the earth depends upon you and your unique group of fellow fanatics for it's survival. The egocentricity of such zeolots is truly beyond comprehension. But then again, I guess we all need a sense of purpose. If we are being studied by extraterrestrials, they must be getting a kick out of such religionists.

Velvet said...

I said:

It was not my experience that ministers tended to hold those consequences over our heads, however. We certainly held those consequences over our own heads, but that was one of the mistakes, IMO.

Corky replied:

"That's exactly what every member of a cult says in every cult everywhere. "

I'm trying to follow your logic here...every member of a cult in every cult everywhere, freely admits the cult is flawed, and made mistakes? Really?

BTW, even the Evangelicals in the Church don't like it when people say "we used to be a cult." They say we were never Christians (which is blatantly false), but I have yet to hear the c-word come out of even the staunchest of Evangelicals' mouths.

"I can't say how often ministers or peers held threats over other congregation members' heads or how seriously other lay members put themselves in thrall."

Neither can I. Neither, in fact, can anyone else commenting here. Including you, Corky.

Lake of Fire Church of God said...

Byker Bob said,"What I've learned over the past year is that Petra as a place of safety was not an original concept with Armstrong."

MY COMMENT - Byker that may be true, but the concept took on a whole new life in the WCG. My understanding is that it was introduced into the Church by Loma Armstrong who saw a cover page photo of Petra on a National Geographic Magazine and commented "that would be a good place for the place of safety". The comment was overheard, and the rest is WCG history.

Richard

Velvet said...

"My understanding is that it was introduced into the Church by Loma Armstrong who saw a cover page photo of Petra on a National Geographic Magazine and commented "that would be a good place for the place of safety". The comment was overheard, and the rest is WCG history."

That's my understanding as well, which is why (as I said in my first comment) I highly doubt Waterhouse's crazy fever dream imaginings about "fleeing" are ever going to come to pass. Especially considering that none of this is even going to happen in any of our lifetimes in the first place!

Retired Prof said...

"[N]one of this is even going to happen in any of our lifetimes in the first place!"

You're almost certainly right.

Astronomers do foresee a vast dramatic change coming eventually, though. They tell us the sun will turn into a red giant star sometime around five billion years from now. It will run out of fuel and then swell larger than the orbit of the earth, enveloping our planet in the swirling inferno of its corona. From there we will fall toward the core, vaporize, and merge completely with the sun.

You have a choice about how to frame this eventuality. You can say the atoms that constitute our bodies now and that will persist in other earthly molecules after we die will be cast into a lake of fire. Or you can say they will be welcomed into a body of blinding brightness.

If it makes you happy, you can even say the atoms of people who disagree with you will be condemned to the first, whereas your own will attain the second and shine with heavenly glory.

Corky said...

Velvet said...
"I can't say how often ministers or peers held threats over other congregation members' heads or how seriously other lay members put themselves in thrall."

Neither can I. Neither, in fact, can anyone else commenting here. Including you, Corky
.

Oh, I think I can. My mother refused an operation that would have saved her life because of the teachings of that cult. I knew people who had divorced their husband/wife because of the divorce and remarriage doctrines of that cult.

The sad part of it is, they did that because of the consequences they faced if they did not obey this cult.

In fact, it was well known amongst the membership that we were no to immunize our kids against disease because vaccines were "pus and corruption". These were the words of HWA himself.

I'm trying to follow your logic here...every member of a cult in every cult everywhere, freely admits the cult is flawed, and made mistakes? Really?

Yes, really. Except you added the words "freely admits the cult is flawed" yourself. Do you freely admit that the Armstrong cult you belong to is flawed? I don't think so. It's the members and some of the ministers who are flawed, right? Same as any other cult.

Velvet said...

"Do you freely admit that the Armstrong cult you belong to is flawed?"

I freely admit that the Church I belong is flawed, has been flawed, and will continue to be flawed, for a very long time to come.

I don't think, if you compare the Church with actual cults, however, that we ever were, or are, a cult. Could we be in the future? That's possible. Anything is possible.

I am sorry for what happened to your mother. But you cannot extrapolate and say that that happened to every single other member; especially not since that had all been changed, by the late 1970s.

I wasn't vaccinated, because I had already been a human pincushion for most of my life, up to that point, and I used the excuse of the Church's entirely optional letter (that had to be requested, it wasn't on offer), to get out of it. Everyone else in the Victoria congregation vaccinated their kids.

This was also only a booster shot I got out of; I got a half-dose of vaccination when I was born because I was premature, and then I got another half-dose when I was of school age because I was underweight. (And I am assuming, since I was vaccinated, that other kids in the Toronto East congregation were vaccinated as well.)

So, my using the Church to weasel out of getting the booster shot (which, to be fair, my parents, and even other members, tried to talk me into getting), actually ended up biting me in the backside, because I ended up catching whooping cough the following year. Not pleasant.

Corky said...

Well, good luck with it, Velvet, but I'm glad I'm not wearing blinkers and dark glasses.

Byker Bob said...

Check out http://nabataea.net/mfp/html.

The Bible stocking in the caves of Petra took place in the 1940's, but the idea of Petra as a place of safety predated it.

BB

Velvet said...

Yeah, I was aware of the Bible-stocking, and uh, Bon, wasn't I the one who posted that URL to Shadows of WCG, once upon a time?

I'm still fascinated by "the city older than recorded by history" and the Nabateans who built the striking stone facades....but essentially lived in hovels in the rocks.

Furthermore, I remain the only one on this thread who has mentioned Indiana Jones. I find that far more disappointing than any of the other responses, to be quite honest. :-)

Velvet said...

BOB I mean, the preview box went blank on me. Not enough coffee.....