The following comment came through on the "United Church of God: Trouble in Paradise With Mar..." entry:
Dennis. I am sending this message as anonymous as my name really doesn't matter. Reading your article on the nature of God according to Mickelson with the United church of God. My first thought was what an enraged person you must be to write some much about this. And in some places with red ink. Do you ever attack the catholic faith? ..talk about doctrinal innacurices.First of all, Dennis did not write this, I did, along with a person from UCG who sent me the information. Little do you realize that neither Dennis, myself or many others here have any "rage" that is eating us away. Seriously, how can we have rage when the current state of the Armstrong Church of God is nothing more than a comedy routine with all of its idiotic false prophets, Old Covenant law pushing Pharisees and absurd proof-texting that goes on. Hardly a day goes by without some idiot in an Armstrong COG splinter group who says or does something incredibly stupid. While it is sad to see the people deceived by the deception they continue to dish out, it is truly laughable at times!
As for the "red ink", it is plainly obvious that the "red" is the Bible scripture extension that is used on this blog to open up a translation of the specific scripture. If you want to get pissed at that then take that up with the writers of the Bible and the app designers.
This blog is about Armstrongism and its various splinter groups and NOT the Catholic Church or Protestant churches. There are plenty, and I mean PLENTY of sites that take up the issues with Catholicism, it's shameful past and its current issues. Please go to one of them and complain to them why they do not speak out against the Tkach's or anyone who abandoned your church. I am sure they will be happy to accommodate you....NOT!
The former WWCG went under because Tkatch senior did away with Gods commandments. Christ said if we really loved him we would keep them. John 14:15.also John 6:21 takes the point much further.I guest he didn't read it. As for you Dennis and anyone reading this, my self included be careful about what the commandments say about bearing false witness or giving false testimony found in exodus 20 and deuteronomy 5..think about it Dennis. As a friend in christ loose some of road rage.The church went "under" because of the self-righteous self-anointed men who decided they knew best and took thousands of church members along with them to set up little empires of legalistic hellholes. Do you honestly think GOD was behind Meredith, Flurry, Pack, Weinland, Thiel, Malm, and most of the other men who started groups? Your very own leaders in UCG plotted and schemed while still on WCG payroll to set up their income streaming splinter church because they knew they would soon be losing their jobs. It wasn't about doctrine, it was about keeping their income coming in! These snakes, while planning this, were also disfellowshipping people right and left who did not agree with the changes. UCG is just as spiritually sick as Dave Pack's, Gerald Flurry's, Bob Thiel's and James Malm's cults. It certainly is NOT better than they are!
So, accusing us of rage is not bearing "false witness"? What about the various liar's occupying positions of authority in various splinter groups of Armstrongism? Are they all telling the truth or are they lying? I don't see you or any other Armstrong COG leaders calling out the liars running various splinter personality cults of the Armstrong COG's. Why are you not speaking out against the devious perverts like Pack, Malm, Theil, Weinland, Flurry and many of your own top leaders in UCG that are corrupt?
Think about it Anonymous...lose some of the road rage!
Anyway, I'm off to Stone Brewery for a cold one and to meet up with former COGgers as we laugh about the current idiocy of the church. Cheers!
15 comments:
As a matter of fact, if you would bother to read his stuff with any care, Dennis does attack the Catholic faith with some frequency, as it suffers from some of the same underlying problems as any theism that relies on irrational dogma. Even though Catholicism keeps to (its version of) keeping the Commandments (unlike Tkachism), Dennis doesn't spare it from the occasional barb.
Dennis may have a soft spot for high-church Protestant liturgy when administered by smart men who hide their disbelief from the congregants in the pews. Aside from that, he strikes me as an equal opportunity critic.
I always love it when these hit-and-run trolls pop on here and start making accusations. They are so clueless. Kind of like the Kitchens as they whore themselves out to all things Herbie.
In that old "classic" Good News article from way back in the early 1960s, HWA proclaimed that criticizing him, or the church, was tantamount to blasphemy of the HS. Unforgivable. Automatic Lake of Fire. Fear of that pretty much put the kabosh on even whispered criticism in secret places amongst those who are said to be converted. That fear redefined everything so that even relatively mild criticism strikes the COGlodytes as being rage, bitterness, and all of the other Armstrong shibboleths and cliches.
Moods and attitudes have calmed down incredibly over the past twenty years. Flaming rhetoric has largely disappeared as people have gotten deeper into their recoveries, with their anger subsiding. Most have realized that they are more likely to be heeded if what they write is carefully measured and logically put together. This is an example of us all helping one another, and why this and other blogs are a good thing..
Some of the most shocking rhetoric of all times came into play with the comments when Stanley Rader and GTA passed away. I can't begin to imagine how our rage-shamer would react to that!
BB
You need a FAQ document that lists all the common tropes.
NO2HWA,
One clarification to your excellent post should be made. It is the ARMSTRONG Churches of God that are nothing more than a comedy routine. Worldwide Church of God and its various splinter harlot daughter churches along with their various HWA wannabees. I see no need to include the dead Sardis grandparent Church - The Church of God, Seventh Day (who somehow doesn't look dead to me) - into this clown circus show.
Rage? What rage!?!? Please pass the beer and popcorn as we all enjoy the clown circus show.
My favorites are the two witnesses from the Book of Revelation Tax Cheat Felon Ron Weinland and his wife witnessing everything that Ron does. That was a good one, and some of the dumb tithe slave sheep bought it! My other favorite is the animated effeminate Bob Thiel. His animation cartoons are "shaking the nations" as Rod Meredith might say. Thiel's cartoons are preaching the Gospel "with power and authority" as Garner Ted Armstrong might say. NOT! But, Thiel does provide lots of entertainment. Other than himself, nobody really takes him seriously. Do they?
Richard
LOF...You are right about comparing Armstrong COG's to legitimate COG's actually doing a worthwhile ministry. I corrected that.
Howard Beale- From the movie "Network"(1976) has this to say to the COGS today!
(original movie statement... https://youtu.be/ZwMVMbmQBug)
IM MAD AS HELL AND IM NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
I don't have to tell you things are bad in the COGS. Everybody knows things are bad. It's depressing. Everybody's getting old or dying off. Your Tithe dollar buys a nickel's worth of output or value. COGS are going bust, splitting over and over.
Brethren keep a gun in their purse, in case there is another "Milwaukee" . Decrepit Sociopathic Punks are running wild with the scriptures and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know these Cults are unfit to stay in and the doctrines are unfit to consume , and we sit watching our computer while some Cult Meister tells us that he is one of the two witnesses, or a prophet , or the Elijah, as if that's the way its supposed to be.
We know things are bad — worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like the COG everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. We beg guys who have the "common doctrine", like Pack, to "please let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave me alone."
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot — I don't want you to write to your minister, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about your depression and the Germans who are supposedly coming to your street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. [shouting] You've got to say: 'I'm a human being,, dammit! My life has value!'
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!
I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say, I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!
Then we'll figure out what to do about all of this insanity. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!
based on what I've seen, a person's life has value only to themselves and a few other people
The extent to which clearly United Church of God Ministry are going through, searching, digging and then commenting on this Website is extremely strange and a ongoing problem for UCG.
Many are noticing.
Deep down, everyone really has a yearning to find out just what the heck is going on. That’s a common human need that can only be suppressed for so long. Anger at betrayal occurs when an individual opens his or her eyes, and throws off the suppression. And then the healing begins.
BB
>>I very much like what Yes and No to HWA posted. Still applicable now as it was then. God bless you whoever you are! :-)
Yes and No (June 30, 2017 at 6:00-6:01 PM) said...
Two verses that proponents also use in arguing that God the Father, was the only God of the Old Testament, are:
Heb 1:1-2 though the last part of verse 2 would possibly raise some questions.
The author of Hebrews is stating the ‘absolute’ or ‘primary’ interpretation.
In Lamentations 2 “(God is the overt subject of 29 out of the first 31 verbs!): God “destroyed,” ‘broken down,” “cut down,” “withdrawn (his protective hand),” “burned,” “bent his bow,” “”killed,” “poured out his fury,” “become like an enemy,”...” (so F.W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations, Interpretation, p.82).
Paul W. Ferris notes that in the defeat of Zedekiah’s Judah “Yahweh is the primary actor, Babylonia the secondary means” (Lamentations, EBC, Rev Ed., Vol.7,p.589).
The argument, then, is that, in the OT God the Father is the “primarily” God and Jesus Christ is the “secondary” God, using Paul Ferris’ terminology. (As Jesus Christ said: “for my Father is greater that I” (John 14:28).
The NIV Study Bible notes on the NT ‘shema’ (1 Cor 8:6) that “God the Father is the ultimate source of all creation (Ac 4:24). God the Son is the dynamic one through whom, with the Father, all things came into existence (Jn 1:3); Col 1:16.”
It may also be said, for want of better terminology, that God is the “ultimate” God and Jesus Christ is the “dynamic” God.
Acts 3:13 acknowledges that God the Father was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob also acknowledge another God-being:
Ge 48:15-16
To clarify which God Jacob was addressing he refers to Jesus Christ as the “Angel” (mal’ak).
Jesus Christ was the ‘dynamic’ God of Jacob; and of his descendants:
Exo 13:17, 21; 14:19
“How God led the Israelites (v.17) is now explained. This single “pillar” (14:24), which was a cloud by day and a fire by night, ... was a visible presence of Yahweh in their midst. The pillar of the cloud and fire was but another name for “the angel of God,” for Exodus 14:19 equates the two as does 23:20-23. In fact, God’s Name was “in” this angel who went before them to bring them into Canaan (23:220-23). He was the “angel of his presence” (Isa 63:8-9). Malachi 3:1 calls this angel the “messenger of the covenant,” who is equated with the Lord, the owner of the temple. Obviously, then, the Christ of the NT is the Shekinah glory or [the ‘ultiomate’] Yahweh of the OT. Through this cloudy pillar the Lord would speak to Moses (33:9-11) and to the people (Ps 99:6-7). Such easy movement from the pillar of cloud and fire to the angel of the Lord himself has already been met in the same interchange between the burning bush, the angel, and the Lord in chapter 3...” (Walter C. Kaiser, Jr, Exodus, Vol.2, EBC, p.385).
Jn 8:41b, 54, 58
“... the most remarkable thing that happened in the faith of the earliest followers of Jesus is that they came to identify him - Jesus - with Yahweh, in calling him Lord, and in many other ways. So, yes it is certainly true, from a whole-Bible perspective, that the God Yahweh of the Old Testament ‘embodies’ (if that is not too human a word) the Son... But on the whole it is probably more appropriate in most cases that, when we read about Yahweh, we should have God the Father in mind” (Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing God the Father through the Old Testament, p.17).
>>So does this mean there are 2 Yahwehs and 2 God beings? ie 1) God the Father and 2) God the Son (the LORD, Angel of the LORD, the Word, Jesus Christ, etc.)? And it was the latter who as the main representative of God the Father was the One who was seen and/or heard by the patriarchs, prophets and people of God throughout the OT/NT since the Father has never been seen or heard by any mortal man?
Tch! TCH!..Stop criticizing God's true ministers who he put in charge of his true Church....
Be careful of bitterness.
Remember God works through human instruments.
Stop looking for negative information about God's true Church on the internet.
Let God Handle it.
Focus on the big picture.
Stop getting your feelings hurt.
If you disagree with God's true ministers it's most likely you are wrong, after all God's true ministers spent years being tried and tested over and over again.
The whole thing is about Government.
God works top down.
Remember God's true ministers are only human.
Submit and be loyal to your leaders.
Don't be an acusser of the brethren like Satan the devil.
Stick to the trunk of the tree.
There you go.... haven't you guys on this site learn anything from your many years in God's true Church.
But I am so confused!!!! With over 400 choices for WCG splinters, who do I listen to?
Maybe we need a multiverse with one universe for each group.
Anonymous 8:07 wrote:
So does this mean there are 2 Yahwehs and 2 God beings? ie 1) God the Father and 2) God the Son (the LORD, Angel of the LORD, the Word, Jesus Christ, etc.)? And it was the latter who as the main representative of God the Father was the One who was seen and/or heard by the patriarchs, prophets and people of God throughout the OT/NT since the Father has never been seen or heard by any mortal man?
Here are a couple of observations (over two posts) that maybe of interest:
Lord/kurios in the Septuagint
Isa 45:21 ... and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.
Isa 45:23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.
Isa 45:25 In the LORD [yehovah, Heb: ; kurios, LXX] shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.
Phil 2:10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
Phil 2:11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord [kurios], to the glory of God the Father.
“The word [kyrios] could, of course be used as an honorific title for human beings (just as lord can be in English). But by far the most significant use of the term, in relations to its application to Jesus in the New Testament, is its use by those who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek long before Christ. In the collection of those translations we now know as the Septuagint, the word kyrios is used virtually as the standard technical term to translate to translate the Tetragrammaton, YHWH. They do not attempt to transliterate the Hebrew form but chose to replicate in Greek the already established Hebrew oral tradition of reading the word ’adonay (Lord) when YHWH occurred in the text. This latter word they rendered ho kyrios, “the Lord.” It is used as the Greek rendering for the name of the God of Israel more than 1,600 times in the Septuagint.
“Any Greek-speaking Jew of the first century would have been entirely familiar with this usage. So to the extent that he or she would have read the Scriptures in Greek, it was second nature to read ho kyrios and think, “the Name,” YHWH. It is altogether remarkable then that even before Paul’s letters (i.e., within the first two decades after the resurrection) the term was being applied to Jesus. And applied not merely as a term of honor for a respected being (as it might have been), but with the fully freighted theological significance of its application to YHWH in Old Testament Scriptures...
“The magnificent prophecies of Isaiah 40-55 assert again and again that YHWH is utterly unique as the only living God in his sovereign power over all nations, and is ability to save. Therefore Paul ... by deliberately selecting a Scripture from such a context and applying it to Jesus, was affirming that Jesus shares the identity and uniqueness of YHWH in these same respects. So sure was this identification that he (they) did not hesitate to insert the name of Jesus when the name of YHWH had occurred in the sacred texts. By doing this they
* gave to Jesus a God title
* applied to Jesus a God text
* anticipated for Jesus God worship
“The missional implications of this opening point about Jesus should be clear. If the mission of the biblical God includes his will to make himself known in his true identity as YHWH, the living God of Israel’s faith, then by identifying Jesus with YHWH, the New Testament sees Jesus as central to the self-revelatory dimensions of God’s mission. But there is far more to this than formal identity...
“Jesus Performs the Functions of YHWH
“Paul application of an Old Testament text about YHWH to Jesus in Philippians 2:10-11 is the most notable but far from the only example of its kind. There are a considerable number of places where Paul quotes Old Testament Scriptures in which YHWH/ho kyrios stood, when he (Paul) is referring to Jesus. Nor is Paul the only New Testament writer to do so.
The author of Hebrews, for example, launches his epistle with a whole salvo of God texts applied to Jesus. Many of these Scriptures are functional - that is, they speak of things that YHWH does or provides or accomplishes. By such scriptural quotations those functions are then attributed to, or closely associated with Jesus... Paul did not originate this practice. Nor did the early church. It goes right back to Jesus himself. For the Gospels preserve numerous way that Jesus in word, deed and implicit claim linked himself with the unique functions of the God of Israel...” (Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God, pp. 108-10).
John and Isaiah
Isa 6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord [’adonay] sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
Isa 6:1 And it came to pass in the year in which king Ozias died, that I saw the Lord [ho kurios] sitting on a high and exalted throne, and the house was full of his glory. (Brenton, LXX).
Isa 6:3 And one cried to the other, and they said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. (Brenton, LXX).
Isa 6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
Jn 12:41 These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him.
“Now for the third time he mentions Isaiah by name. Having appealed to “the word of Isaiah the prophet ... which he said” (v.38; also v.39, “again Isaiah said”), he concludes, “These things Isaiah said because he saw his glory, and he spoke about him.” The reference is to Isaiah’s vision in the temple, the setting of the second quotation (in vv.39-40). There “I saw the Lord,” he claimed, “seated on a throne, high and lofty and the house was full of glory” (Isa 6:1, LXX), and he heard the seraphs crying one to another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; all the earth is full of his glory” (6:3, LXX). The Gospel writer’s startling claim is that “the Lord,” or “Lord of hosts,” in Isaiah’s vision was none other than Jesus, that the “glory” filling both “the house” (or temple) and “all the earth” was Jesus’ glory, and consequently that when Isaiah spoke he was speaking of Jesus...
Isa 6:1 ... I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up...
Isa 53:1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
Isa 52:13 Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.
“How then does the comment that Isaiah was speaking of Jesus affect the interpretation of 53:1? A possible answer is that just as “the Lord” is described as “high and lofty” in the inaugural vision, and the temple filled with “his glory” (Isa 61:1, LXX), so (as we have seen) the Lord’s “servant” is described in the context of 53:1 as destined to be “lifted up and glorified exceedingly” (52:13, LXX). From the Gospel writer’s perspective, the glory of the Lord (Isa 6:1,3) and the “glory” of his servant (Isa 52:13 seem to have merged into one, yielding a certain ambiguity (possibly intentional) in the notice that Isaiah “saw his glory, and he spoke about him” (v.41, italics added).
“While Jesus is without question the intended antecedent of “his” and “him,” Jesus has not been mentioned by name since verse 36, and the Gospel writer leaves it to the reader to infer that the “glory” of the God that Isaiah saw was in fact the glory of Jesus, now revealed in his signs and words (see 1:14; 2:11). It is not a difficult inference, given Jesus’ own claims earlier that Abraham “rejoiced that he would see my day, and he saw and was glad” (8:56), and that “before Abraham came to be, I am” (8:58). As in that passage, the point is not simply that Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus by seeing into the future, but that Isaiah saw the glory of the preexistent Jesus, the Word who was “in the beginning” (1:1-2), already in his own time” (J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John, NICNT, pp.710-11).
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