Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Apartments and Condos To Be Built On Church Property


I have to laugh as this just reminds of WCG having to dump the Pasadena property because of failing income.  Grandiose religious schemes and mega churches are turning into money pits all over the country!



Crystal Cathedral Sells Property for $46M in Bankruptcy Exit Plan

By Elena Garcia | Christian Post Reporter

The Crystal Cathedral, seeking a way to resolve its debt woes, will sell its church and 40-acre campus for $46 million to an Orange County developer, according to the federal bankruptcy plan filed Friday.

Greenlaw Partners of Newport Beach will buy the property in Garden Grove, Calif., and plans to build apartments on the land, the Chapter 11 exit plan filed at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana disclosed.

The real estate developer will lease the property back to Crystal Cathedral for $212,000 a month and guarantee exclusive lease rights for 15 years, according to the reorganization plan.

The church administration will have the option of buying back the church, the landmark venue of its "Hour of Power" broadcasts, for $30 million within the next four years.

The bankruptcy plan is awaiting approval. It could be approved as early as late summer.

Crystal Cathedral, whose founder is Robert H. Schuller, has been looking for an exit strategy from its millions of dollars in debt ever since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last October.

Harold Camping: Corpses of the Unsaved Will Be Flung From Graves



This moron just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper.  It looks like most of his followers are still loyal to him.  Should we expect anything less?  Not really, considering we did the same thing in the early 1970's when Herbert Armstrong's lies did not come true.  The church stood behind him and sent even more money in. It is starting to look like October 21st will be another fun day!  The rapture and the undead all bouncing off each other.



Harold Camping: Dead Bodies Will Surface from Graves on Oct. 21 Doomsday

By Elena Garcia | Christian Post Reporter

While President Obama and the rest of the nation spent Memorial Day paying tribute to American veterans, doomsday preacher Harold Camping predicted Monday that corpses of the "unsaved," which includes those in the U.S. armed services, will be flung out of their graves and on the ground like "manure" on October 21.

Camping's comments during the Open Forum program on Family Radio Monday comes one week after he publicly recanted his predicted date of Rapture, changing it from May 21 to October 21.

He has persistently maintained that his dates for a May 21 Judgment Day and a October 21 Doomsday are accurate. The only adjustment in his forecast, according to Camping, is that the judgment on May 21 came in a "spiritual" sense rather than a physical one marked by disasters like earthquakes.

Judgment Day on May 21 did come, asserted Camping. However, he clarified that the Judgment Day arrived in a spiritual sense rather than manifesting in a physical Rapture.

On Monday, a caller asked Camping whether they would see any signs from Deuteronomy 28, beginning with verse 15, fulfilled in the coming End Days. The passage refers to the curse of God for those who disobey his teachings.

"Those who are unsaved are going to experience the curse of God," affirmed Camping, president of Family Radio.

He predicted that whatever of a person's corpse is left in the grave on October 21 "will be thrown out of the grave" and be "like manure on the ground." Furthermore, those who die on October 21 won't receive a burial, said Camping.

"They will be shamed in the eyes of God," he said.

Harold Camping then turned his attention to Memorial Day to further illustrate the gravity of his prediction.
"One of the things that you'll notice at this time of year. We're talking about May 30 and we consider all the graves and all those who have died in connection with the armed services of the United States and there is great respect, great respect for them," he said.

It is very proper for a person to be buried when he dies, acknowledged Camping, but on October 21 those who are "unsaved" will not remain that way.

"On the last day, all the unsaved are going to come under the curse of God. They are going to be thrown out of the grave if there are still a corpse there or bones. If they are in the grave, they will be shamed in the eyes of God. If they die on that day, they're not going to be buried. They're going to be shamed in the eyes of God," Camping predicted.

The radio broadcaster went on to explain that the person himself will never experience any of this since they are dead and no longer have any consciousness.

"But they will be shamed," he reiterated.

Word's To Choke On




Words to Choke On

Dennis Diehl - EzineArticles Expert AuthorWillful ignorance is a disease. The problem is that those who have it and choose it as a course in living, don't believe they do have it.  I read The Journal, a compilation of all the theological wranglings, ideas, opinions, declarations and contradictory truths in the Churches of God and really in all religion, and note the same thing I noted as a kid..."All these perspectives contradict and they can't all be right."   The authors, however, believe that everyone else, but themselves, is wrong.  If they just use bigger letters and brighter colors in their pronouncements, the wise will see that they alone are on the true path and need your support. 


To some, God has a puzzle to solve and only the wise can solve it. To others, the Elijah has come and gone and only the chosen have been left to close up the house.  It's really kinda nuts.  In all cases, however, no one is ever just simply wrong.  We can't know the day or hour of Jesus return, but darn it. that does not mean we can't know the month or the year and I will be recalculating that for us all by weeks end. 

Pious conviction with marginal information is not our friend, and sanctified ignorance is still ignorance.

I have met a lot of people who are never wrong. They never take back that which they spoke which proved to be either stupid, inane or simply wrong. They waffle, redefine and deny, but they are never wrong. These people are incapable of saying "oops," much less, "I'm sorry," You find them everywhere. They might be a pastor, a politician, a CEO or a President. They might be your mother- in-law, father-in-law, dad, mom, brother or sister. Of course, it could be you, but you won't notice that. One common thing they share is that they are NEVER wrong. Of course they are wrong, misinformed or just plain stupid in the way they view and filter their world, but they are never wrong in fact. Their inability to say "I am sorry," or "I was wrong," is legendary in the family, the church, the office or the government and the damage inflicted on those that fall victim of these people can be humorous, mildly annoying or catastrophic.

Ron Weinland, who believes he and his wife are the Two Witnesses of Revelation, Dave Pack, who alone is the only true Apostle of the still tiny Sliver Church of God, Gerald Flurry, who just knows he is "That Prophet" and sole heir to truth...are never wrong.  You have never heard any of them after a time utter those words.

Harold Camping of the May 21st, 2011 Rapture debacle is never wrong and won't admit it. Rather, as most, redefines the mission, declares it was a spiritual event and not a physical one and "you people misunderstood."  And then turns right around and sets another date in the Fall. 

Politicians who call people names and then say they didn't, or knew it was an insult but claim being oblivious to the fact, are this kind of which I speak. Men who can't come up with anything better to say than "she's ugly" and then waffle around trying to come up with another reason as to why they say such stupid things fit the bill too. "Im sorry, I was rude and wrong," will do just fine. After years of being told we are going to "stay the course," we now are being told that never meant this or that when it did as it was thrown back in the faces of those that asked about rethinking the course.

The average American is not stupid when they hear the answers given to questions by those that really don't want to give the answer. We even mostly know the answer before we ask the question and we certainly can tell when the answer given is not the real answer. How many "oops, sorry about that," have we heard after these great observations and declarations? How many White House press briefings can you listen to before you realize either, "the guy is lying," waffeling or they must think we are absolutely brain dead and stupid.

Let's have some fun seeing where "I'm sorry, I was mistaken," never seems to reveal it's graceful presence.

"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03) I think we can see why Tony may have gotten the job White Press Secretary...

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Often those who find it difficult to say "I was wrong," or "I am sorry," are very quick to accuse everyone else of that inability, only to later have to eat the proverbially crow, though it still always tastes like steak to them.

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again."

And we're waiting to hear a few words of apology from a few people as well... It's always good for those given to high fiveing themselves before the time to think before they speak and remember that labeling people for their caution, disagreements, observations, intuitive and gut feelings about that which no one else seems to be thinking about, can come back to haunt them. Too much enthusiasm for "see, see, we're right, you're wrong," and all the backbiting that goes along with it has a way of showing up again to challenge the braggarts. We all have done it and we all do it, but when the stakes are as high as they are these days for all of us, the inability to say, "I am sorry," I was wrong," or "I made a mistake," is no statesman like quality. It can lead to everything from economic disaster to death, and it was not necessary.

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

Oops...Can we all give a collective Homer Simpson "Doh!".
"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)

I'm sure some of these commentators have since admitted to having been a bit prematurely enthusiastic for that which, to date, has proven to be one the biggest miscalculations in American history. The "V" word has even been spoken by the man who we may have hoped had learned something from his generations experience with Vietnam. Of course most of us are not privy to other agendas besides spreading freedom around the world.

Ministers are not above the inability to say I am sorry or I was wrong either. I pastored in a denomination that was never wrong from the top down, but always wrong from the bottom up. Come to think of it, that sounds like the government too at the moment or maybe all moments. Countless, and I mean countless ministers have predicted the exact time that Jesus would return and have been wrong, oh let's say...100% of the time.

Whole denominations have mislead the faithful on a myriad of topics but to say "We're sorry, we were wrong," is just not something even the humble in Jesus can come up with very often. Saying one is sorry is usually something that occurs only after one is caught or trapped.

It's has taken over 400 years to absolve the then heretic Galileo from thinking the earth revolved around the sun and that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system and the sun revolved around us.  After all, the Bible says that "the power of God is from the rising of the Sun until the going down thereof," so it is the sun that moves. Christians never think that this scripture also indicates that to the author, God, like the Sun was only powerful during the day and had to yield power to forces of darkness at sunset.  That may because God IS the Sun.

 Churches hold on to their fables and apologies way beyond what most normal institutions do. How long will it take to apologize when Church officials decide that Limbo is not the place where the unsaved babies go, like they know, when they announce this reality to the faithful? You can bet you will hear things like, "It was never a doctrine," or "It never was an official teaching," but you won't get away with that kind of "we're sorry," with the average person who was either tormented or only mildly comforted by this when they lost a child prior to the arrival of the sprinklers.

Too many ministers have the subconscious belief that if they are wrong, God will correct them and, of course, any apologies or admissions of wrongness will be spoke privately to the deity. They will, however, announce to you that they have done this, but you will never really know. Ministers need to apologize to people for it is people they offend and not a Deity. 

Some of us can't say we are sorry or we were wrong because we falsely believe that somehow it a weakness to admit such things. More than one psychologist has noted that "Fool me once..shame, shame...on...you," is not so much a gaff as the deeply psychological inability to say "shame on me," which is another way of not being able to admit to being wrong or a committing a misstep. To choke on the words expressing shame, sorrow, apology or being mistaken is not a good sign when we are talking about mature leadership. To come across as anything less than human is not going to win points with the not as stupid as one might think average church goer or American.

We lie when we can't admit we are wrong, mistaken or perhaps have another agenda that we do not wish
disturbed. I think Americans are beginning to believe that this last reason is more the case with Iraq and perhaps Iran. Even church goers are beginning to question the motives of those that demand too much of their money for the Lord and remind you that you can be "dismembered" when you ask uncomfortable questions about doctrine or the Bible itself. "Just trust me," is no longer going to work among the informed. Like Snickers, the Internet is a gift from God Himself. One can do their own homework and come to their own conclusions using far more information than that just supplied by the Guru, Apostle, Witness or Priest.

We live in a time where Presidents, Politicians and Pastors who have the inability to say that they have been misguided, unguided, mistaken and plainly wrong is endangering not only our intellectual health, but our lives on the planet. Suck it up guys. Just say it when it dawns on you. Allow it to dawn on you from time to time. "I was wrong, I am sorry."

When was the last time you heard your executive, judicial, senatorial, congressional or pastoral leaders say "I was wrong," "We were wrong," "I am sorry"? From "I did not have sex with that woman," to "those weapons of mass destruction must be around here somewhere," just saying "I'm sorry," seems the hardest thing to do. Give it a try anyway before you kill us all spiritually and literally.

Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com

The Most Powerful Building On Earth Owned By PCG?



Did you know that the building pictured above is causing the nations to shake and tremble?  Who would have imagined the  House of Idolatry parked in the middle of Oklahoma could be such a powerful witness?  The Philadelphia Church of God cult thinks it is.  They seem to think that the world is shaking in their boots because of the message Lord Six-Pack proclaims from it's stage.

In Haggai 2, God makes it plain that the shaking of the nations is tied directly to a specific sign. God calls this physical sign His “house,” a magnificent physical structure designed to declare the glory of God, and from which God’s truth flows. In his booklet, Mr. Flurry explains how God begins to “shake all nations” at the same time as this “house for God” is constructed. God intends for this house, Mr. Flurry wrote, to be “a dreadful warning sign to the world,” and “a sign of world upheaval.”

So how does PCG have the right  to claim this?  Well.....since they opened the house of idolatry called Herbert W Armstrong Auditorium in September of 2010 the following dramatic events have happened around the world that PROVES PCG is the ONLY place on earth preaching the gospel. The world is trembling at the message.

Brace yourself and take a look at events since last September. 
Practically the whole of the Middle East and North Africa is violently convulsing. In December, the West-friendly government of Tunisia was shaken from office by a popular uprising. This revolution caused far more consequential aftershocks in Egypt, toppling an American ally, Hosni Mubarak, and creating a vacuum that radical Islamic forces have already begun to fill.
Bahrain has also been rocked with major protests, supported by Iran. Iran has also scored significant victories in Iraq and Lebanon. In December, Iraq finally formed a coalition government, but only after Iranian-supported anti-American Moqtada al-Sadr agreed to support Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In January, Hezbollah brought down the Saad Hariri government in Lebanon when its ministers and allies withdrew from the cabinet. The new prime minister, Najib Mikati, is Hezbollah’s man—amounting to a soft coup by the Iranian-backed terrorist group.
In Syria, more than a thousand people have been killed by security forces loyal to Bashar Assad. Libya is trembling amid a civil war that erupted when dictator Muammar Ghadafi responded to protesters with brutal force. Yemen is on the verge of civil war. Tremors of popular unrest have also been felt in Mauritania, Morocco, Djibouti, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria and Iran.
Since the wave of Arab protests began last year, tension between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and North Africa has greatly intensified. Hundreds of Christians have been killed and thousands have been displaced, creating a trend that presages a prophesied Catholic-Muslim clash.
In Israel, in March terrorists knifed to death five members of a Jewish family in the West Bank, Hamas resumed rocket attacks, and a terrorist bomb shook Jerusalem. In May, the “moderate” Palestinian organization Fatah forged an alliance with Hamas, another Iran-backed terrorist group. Then, despite this provocative decision, U.S. President Barack Obama heaped pressure on Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians. His “encouragement” didn’t sit well with Israel and seriously damaged U.S.-Israel relations.

I won't even add the stupidity that he continues on with that the earthquakes and tornadoes of late is more punishing signs from God to back up his witness.  It's too stupid to quote.

That's one mighty powerful building that Six Pack has built.  Even HWA never claimed his auditorium was such a magical place.  Even though Herb had originally called the auditorium The House of God, it quickly fell out of favor as people in the community would not attend a concert series in a building called that.  On top of that, it certainly was not a 'godly' house considering the drugs and alcohol that were used by so many there.  The sexual activity that went on (straight and gay). The theft by employees and many other things.

I also find it interesting that one of PCG's musical CD's looks surprisingly like a propaganda piece for the Red Army!  Is Lord Six Pack a Socialist now? Or, is this a subtle symbol of what PCG considers it's self as warriors conquering the world?