It is that time of year as various Churches of God start taking reservations for their annual Christmas celebrations at various locations around the country. It is striking to see UCG admit that their annual Christmas celebration draws more people than any of their Feast sites do. After all, it is held in a resort all decked out for Christmas with Santa, holiday foods, Christmas music and glorious Christmas decorations. The amazing thing is that not one single UCG member or teenager ever sees, eats, or hears anything related to Christmas while at the resort. God certainly performs miracles!
“The Winter Family Weekend in Lexington, Kentucky has helped change the culture of the Church of God. Twenty years ago God blessed us with an event without borders. People quickly learned that it is what you believe — not the name on the church door that makes the difference. It’s an environment where friends can meet as equals to worship together and celebrate the Faith that is common to us all.”
The United Church of God will be having a Northwest Family Weekend in Portland, Oregon, but its main WFW will be at the Great Wolf Lodge in Mason, Ohio. Viktor Kubik has commented that, “It is the largest gathering of United Church of God members in one place – larger than any Feast site.” COG News
16 comments:
Advice to all COG Christmas observers in your wonderful Christmas holiday get togethers.
1) No Christmas trees (have to keep up appearances)
2) Do not sing Christmas carols
3) Your gifts should be clothing and meals - (gotta keep up appearances again)
Remember you are not celebrating Jesus in any form or fashion or word and deed.
Do this and you can be like everybody else in the world!
At least Victor is being honest about it. Although he should not be comparing non holy WFW attendance with supposed to be Holy Tabernacles attendance.
They never compare the Summer camps attendance with Tabernacles attendance.
"The United Church of God will be having a Northwest Family Weekend in Portland, Oregon,"
Well now.... a place for me to spend some time during the holidays. :)
Gotta love that this COG group has been hosting a Christmas weekend for the past 20 years, while preaching against this pagan holiday! Can you say "cognitive dissonance"? I used to know COG people who put up their "winter lights" in December, but swore they were NOT keeping Christmas. Yeah, right....whatever.
Kubik states, "It’s an environment where friends can meet as equals to worship together and celebrate the Faith that is common to us all.”
So, does that mean that the feast, holy days and regular church services are places where friends can NOT meet as equals?
Sad and pathetic.
No Christmas carols. What about the following:
- Jingle Bells. A winter song that doesn't mention Xmas.
- Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen. The Feast of Saint Stephen the Martyr is December 26. Oh, the song is about being kind to the less fortunate, which might be a reason to forbid it.
- We Three Kings. That was written for the festival of Epiphany, January 6.
Dennis:
You just may have got 2 deacons "Security Detail" by the doors! ;)
There is absolutely no way that you can go to a place that has Christmas Carols, Festivities, lights everywhere, music, Santa - the WHOLE shebang - and rent a little room and say you are having nothing to do with Christmas because you are renting a little room and doing your own thing in that room. Give me a break.
You walk into the place, it's Christmas.
You walk around the hotel, it's Christmas.
Suddenly in your little room, it's not Christmas.
If you were in the middle of the Feast, in a Church-owned Tabernacle building, and three or so Catholics had a mass in the Choir rehearsal room, in said Tabernacle building, during the Feast, in your building, would they be AT THE FEAST? Of course they would. They'd be right in the mix of people leaving in the parking lot, walking through the crowds to the room (Being ignored and scowled at, mind you), - but they'd be there, at the Feast. There is no doubt they'd be influenced by the Feastgoers all around them. How is this any different?
Why can't they just be honest and say they love the festive atmosphere. Because if they didn't, they simply wouldn't be there at all. They would just rent some old bingo hall and enjoy the weekend there. Or in a school gymnasium, or a YMCA or something. They CHOSE this place, they go to this place, on purpose. Any excuse they make or try to make is overruled and dismissed - or should be.
The disUnited Church of Godlessness is where unrepentant, unconverted, unbelieving, uncivilized, unsociable weirdos and perverts go to behave very badly while playing church.
Isn't this like going to a topless bar and claiming that you are oblivious to the girls, you just went in there for a beer?
HWA must be turning over in his grave! He always stressed that Sunday be a day of work, flaunting that so that all the neighbors profoundly realized that you don't keep the pagan ol' Roman sabbath. It was his way of adding caps and exclamation points to behavior, making it hyperbolic as well. Yet, here are COG members and their families appearing to outsiders to be blending in with Christmas. The only thing positive I see in this is that it's good practice for the teenagers who will be leaving the church when they graduate from high school. Kind of a nice segue into the mainstream.
Oh, what a travesty. Why not just admit that you want to hold a solstice celebration to brighten the gloomiest part of the year? (It isn't gloomy down under, so they should do it in June.) I've done that for decades now. I don't care a fig for any of the religious trappings. It's just a logical time to get together and have some camaraderie. I don't need to run off somewhere to do it and spend a lot of money. Same with that old and now meaningless feast time.
Let's be fair here. Isn't that quote about Lexington from COG Cincinnati, and not UCG?
After all, Jim O'Brien's WFW started all this. And, of course, a church split resulted from it.
(In case the earlier submission didn't get through)
Let's be fair here. Isn't that quote about Lexington from COG Cincinnati - NOT UCG?
After all, it was Jim O'Brien's WFW that started the wave in the first place. And sadly, some say it led to a church split.
SHT 12:45
I quite enjoyed your little analogy on mass keeperson the poconos.
It took me back to sabbath when I was a kid. Sometimes my mom and I would (before services) sneak out to the basement and watch the famous dancers I knew from television practice. Non of them would have claimed attending a church.
I noticed at the pittsburg shooting that 3 different jewish congregations were keeping services at the same time there. The epithomization of agreeing to disagree since in death we are all the same.
Nck
The ancient pagans called it the Saturnalia.
The modern pagans (professing “Christians”) call it Christmas.
The UCG calls it the Winter Family Weekend.
Same thing with different names. Fooling nobody but their own selves.
With an apostate like Victor Kubic running the UCG into the ground and back into the world, expect even more nonsense to be slipped in.
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