Saturday, March 19, 2016

Bob Thiel Struggling To Find Money To Support His African Churches




Robert Thiel reports that the church building in Nigeria has been completed. 
“In Nigeria churches are required to own at least one building or the government will shut them down. It really stretched our finances to have to help with the Nigerian building project and we still have not fully recovered our fund situation. 
Evans Ochieng reports from Kenya: “I met three congregations in Kisii.
The first congregation I met was Singera. This is a new congregation of Peter Omuya. I was very happy because this congregation has completely changed from Sunday to Sabbath and they are very active. The problem which they have is a hall ... they are just under trees. I promised them that they should get some poles, so that I will help them in some other areas like iron sheets, nails and roofing nails and roof timbers. So we came to conclusion that in April we shall try to make that hall before heavy rain starts.
After that I met another new congregation of Mageche. They are in a small town where we rented for them a hall, This congregation is bigger than Singera. They have 38 members. I paid for them a hall for four months. They are very serious in God’s work. Since many things are new to them, they are active to learn many things.
Lastly I met our old congregation of Eberege. This is an old congregation with over 80 members.” Church of God news

Friday, March 18, 2016

Carl Jackson Likens Trump Supporters To COG Cult Members (The Worldwide Church of Trump)




Many of the Churches of God look to World Net Daily as their ONLY source of "real" news that is conservative in bent.

Carl Jackson, a former COG member, talks about his exit from the Tea Party and the COG. He then likens the followers of Donald Trump to those followers of Armstrongism.

This is gong to be a bitter pill for COG groups to swallow.

THE WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF TRUMP 
Exclusive: Carl Jackson likens candidates' followers to cult members 
I grew up in a cult. You may have heard of it – the Worldwide Church of God (WWCG). Herbert W. Armstrong was its founder and pastor general. By the grace of God, under the leadership of Joseph Tkach, Armstrong’s successor, the church was transformed by the truth of Jesus Christ. You’d think most people would’ve been happy about that. I mean, the concept of being saved from the wrath of God by some dude named Jesus who atoned for our sins eternally by being crucified on a tree trunk sounded pretty cool to me! Unfortunately, it didn’t sound so great to many others. 
Cults always have a man they follow – a figurehead who will lead them to drink the poisonous Kool-Aid. True Christians don’t take the bait; Christ alone is our answer. Many conservatives have taken the bait on Donald Trump, when our litmus test should be the Constitution alone. 
New sects quickly spawned from the breakup of the WWCG . Lives were ruined. Ironically, as I reminisce, what I regret most is how contemptuous we treated others. We oozed a puss of holy superiority. We were nice enough, I suppose, as long as you didn’t disagree with us or stayed quiet – kind of like Trump supporters.


How The Church Helped Ruin The Life Of A Promising Baseball Athlete



The world made more sense to Danny Thomas when he was on the baseball field. Not always enough sense, but when things were going well, it was a respite from his demons. When he struggled on the diamond, however, his problems overwhelmed him. A longing search for inner peace eventually put him out of step with the game. He sacrificed his career for his God, but found religion to be no more of a permanent fix than baseball. In the end, there was no fix for Danny Thomas. 
Danny Thomas bounced around a lot as a kid, from Birmingham to Mobile to southern Illinois and to the rough outskirts of East St. Louis. He described his mother as a “religious fanatic” who dabbled in all kinds of faiths before settling with the World Wide Church of God (WWCG), a sect of Fundamentalist Christianity that had been founded in the 1930s as an over-the-air radio church. For a time, Danny joined his mother in the church, but lapsed when its decree that no member shall work between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday interfered with his baseball schedule.
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His newfound inner peace came at a cost. Having rejoined the WWCG, Thomas was now forbidden to work between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday, when he was expected to meditate and attend church services. It was standard practice for teams to play Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, which meant Thomas would be unavailable for two games every week. Factoring in scheduled Saturday doubleheaders, Thomas estimated he would miss 40 games per season because of his religious convictions. “[The Brewers] were quite surprised,” Thomas said of his declaration. “They asked me to reconsider and I did. I thought about all the things I’ve been through and whether I should go back and become the old me or not. I decided there is something more important [than baseball] and said I couldn’t play on my Sabbath.”

Read the entire story here:  The Strange Story of the Sundown Kid:  Troubled Milwaukee Phenom Danny Thomas