Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders

Sunday, February 27, 2011

How Finding 'Grace' Sent Malm Into Fits of Rage Today



Interesting things have been going on over on James Malm's 'Glowering Darkness' blog today.  He seems to be going into meltdown mode.  . He is posting things that are getting crazier and crazier every day.  Conspiracy theories, demons, Russian witches, Judaizing, UCG accusations, and theological ignorant ramblings.The entire world is a conspiracy and a tool of Satan to keep us from keeping the law and doing 'works.'


Malm is going ballistic over Bible translations that he claims are 'new age' and are products of demonism inspired by Russian witch Madam Blavatski.  Malm says Thomas Edison was one of Madam Blavatski's acolytes and got many of his inventions from demons.   Since Satan is an angel of light, he inspired Edison to create the light bulb........ He also claims Hitler was one of her acolytes as well as Henry Ford.


Malm says President Roosevelt never made a decision without first consulting spirits in seances and that Chruchilll was a druid who worked with demons. And that the Anglo Saxon world is rotting away because of demons, Theosophy and Madam Blavatski.


So what stirred up this conspiracy theory lunacy?  It was something that you would never have guessed.


An ex-UCG member who spent time studing his bible without any HWA, UCG, related booklets and articles and discovered GRACE!  That simple little word that turns rabid Armstrongite's into frothing at the mouth rage!


If you believe in God's grace you are a damnable heretic committing all kinds of  wantonness because being grace filled means you are an unrepentant, sodomizing, adulterous sinner.  Oy!  The lies Armstrongites love to tell in order to keep people enslaved to the law!






This is the false religion of license to sin, through the grace of God; which was prophesied to come in the last days.  This denies Christ even though it purports to emphasize Christ.
This false permissive “love” removes the AUTHORITY of Jesus Christ and the need to recognize that authority and to obey him and his Father.  This deceitful insidious evil, preempts obedience by producing the attitude that it really does not matter because we shall all be forgiven anyway.  The law is then  pictured as something Pharisaical and an unnecessary heavy burden; when in fact the law delivers us from the burden of sin.


Here is what set Malm off the deep end today: Grace may be entering the UCG (FINALLY!!!!)


This is what happened in the WCG with the Tkach era and it is what is now happening in the UCG.  In May there will be another Conference and election: WATCH the direction that is taken after that.  The fruits should become clear by the fall Feast.
I received a message from a man in the UCG, who is now taking a sabbatical to write a book on Law and Grace in preparation for the coming changes. His Blog is an excellent placce to see the subtlty of the new take on the Covenants, and Law and Grace; that are slowly being inserted into the UCG.
Michael Mynard’s Blog  will put right before  your eyes in a  nutshell; what will be done subtly over many months in the UCG. His web site is now under construction.  By all means look through this Blog and its pages to see the subtle errors. See how he says that the sons of the King are “above the law” subtly twisting a scripture on the temple tax to somehow include all the law.  Be sure to notice how many “New Age” quotes and translations he uses.
Read through this Blog and then take a listen to the New Covenant series of audios by Robin Webber.  Look for the subtlities, the inferences, the allusions and the little twists, as he uses a six or seven part series to put over the new UCG agenda and bury it in a multitude of words.  “Church family is to love one another; we obey God because we love him and for no other reason because we no longer have to obey,
Double speak to confuse and distract as the subliminal message of “love trumps law” is entrenched in this phsycologiocal warfare of the spirit. Teaching us that we should just wink at and tolerate sin; and compromise with God’s law anytime the going gets difficult.
Teaching that “love” is the “easy way” and that when the going gets tough we should just push the “easy butten” and compromise with God’s law because he is love and will understand and forgive.

One reader who mistakenly thinks Malm is endorsing Michael Maynard's blog sends Malm into meltdown with his response.  Careful Bro!  You are going to pop a blood vessel!


I AM NOT ENDORSING HIS BLOG! I AM PRESENTING IT AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE EVIL THAT WOULD BE THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF THIS “LOVE TRUMPS LAW” GARBAGE; SLOWLY BEING SEEPED INTO UCG.
Michael’s blog is the anithesis of sound doctrione and true reliogion; his positions are an abomination and utterly disgusting to me!!! James

Malm also has this to say about "'love is the fulfillment of the law' hype"

It destroys faith and without faith we cannot please God. It also destroys “works” and there can be no faith without works for only the “doers of the law will be justified”. A terrible and most subtle evil is seeping into the organization. The whole concept that UCG is now following is to focus people inward at serving each other and loving each other and the organization. The problem is that the focus is being changed from God to US; the focus is being changed from serving God and achieving unity through our unity with God to unity by and through ourselves



Michael's blog is here The True Doctrine of Christ
and here  Unraveling Armstrong's Doctrinal Errors
Here are some interesting quotes from Maynard's blog that I am SURE that set Malm off today:

I told  Dave Treybig, the Tampa United Church of God's former pastor, by email this past July, I was taking a sabbatical to write a book on a biblical topic. My topic had to do with investigating the UCG’s doctrines that teach a blend of Old Testament Laws including Holy Days, Tithing, and Circumcision, with New Testament theology that can never be fully reconciled from scripture.  This area of UCG theology has always caused me, and many others I know, internal conflict because it obviously contradicted the new testament aspect of Salvation through Grace.  This caused me to attempt to ignore this conflict between Bible truth and  UCG (Armstrong) doctrine. But sooner or later I knew I would be forced to face this seeming “paradox.” On what level I did not know until now.

The general membership of the UCG and other churches that adhere to Armstrongism  know that  observing all of the Old Testament "annual sabbaths" or holy days is a doctrinal requirement for church members. Further it is reasoned that is  the only way the church could fully understand God’s plan of salvation. However based upon the writings of the Apostle Paul, this doctrine is clearly anything but Christian and not supported by any New Testament scripture. The first era Church of God never observed these days. Not one instance of observing the Feast pf Tabernacles, or other Feast Day Observance is recorded after the first Pentecost where the Holy Spirit was given thus beginning the New Covenant Church of Christ.

Salvation  is offered by God by Faith through Grace alone,  the Gentiles knew nothing about the Laws of Moses. They were never bound to observe the law of Moses by the apostles of Christ. 
 
 There was no salvation, no eternal life obtainable under the Old Covenant.

According to All  New Testament Teachings          ..especially those of Paul...Herbert W. Armstrong taught a theology that CUT HIS DISCIPLES OFF FROM CHRIST and LEFT THEM FALLEN FROM GRACE! CUT OFF FROM SALVATION! 



RIGHT NOW, ALL WHO FOLLOW
ARMSTRONGISM ARE LOST!
(as Paul writes in Galatians 5)


FOR INSTANCE, BY KEEPING THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES THIS YEAR YOU HAVE CAUSED THE LOSS OF YOUR SALVATION!


Michael Maynard has discovered many of the things a lot  of us discovered years ago.   Being free from Armstrongism is such a great thing!










20 comments:

  1. Doing gives much more the illusion of correctness than just Being does. Does that sound too New Age? Being of a certain mind, especially when it is liberating seems to make those that must Do nuts.

    I can't ever remember anyone wanting to be just like a DOER and SUBMITTER. Humans tend to wish they could be more like the one who just is who they are. Oops, New Age again.

    DOERS can't seem to fathom, "You can't be anything but yourself!"

    They really believe they can be come either "mature" or "perfect as your Heavenly Father is." Whew...no challenge there!

    Paul said, "Follow me as I follow Christ." Problem is I don't see many even in the NT that is just dying to become just like the Apostle Paul. All in Asia, who forsook him, certainly weren't interested.

    There is a butt for every seat. Some butts have to be where the law rules and life is pure black or white. Some butts like the music or the pomp and ceremony and so gravitate towards those churches. Some butts are intellectual and seem not to enjoy checking their brains at the door, so they find a thinking church or pastor. Some butts love emotion and drama, so they find the church that allows them moan and peep, wave and mutter.

    Some butts love Surprising God and so there is a seat for them as long as they don't mind just making stuff up and calling it church.

    Here is my take on why we are all butts in search of a seat.

    http://ezinearticles.com/?We-Join-and-Believe-What-Serves-Our-Need..-Which-is-Why-One-Can-Be-Manipulated&id=335242

    Dennis

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  2. hey...we can call the Doers......
    DO-NUTS! Now if we could just get some good coffee :)

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  3. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
    Oscar Wilde

    "If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all."
    Billy Holiday

    "Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers"
    Voltaire

    THIS ONE IS FOR DAVE PACK who loves to make fun of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates

    "Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
    Plato

    "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
    Howard Thurman

    "There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision. When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you."
    Stacey Charter

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  4. Hey Banned, thanks for the coverage of Malm's meltdown over at the Slimy Blight Bog. I am working on a rebuttal to James' Law Trumps Grace fallicy. Should be up later today or tomorrow am...the tease is there now.

    Today I think, How can anyone spew that rubbish and type the name of Jesus with the same keyboard? Is it possible that James' "Korah-upt Keyboard" has pre-programmed macros for each Armstrongite "proof text" memory verse answer He flings out. For certain He is thoroughly pre-rogrammed to circumvent the truth like a lot are, and some of us were yesterday.

    I am covering the whole ball of wax in my upcoming book, from G.G. Ruper, W. Miller, GE White, Elbert Hubbard, and many others all the way to Herbert W. tracing how all these odious doctrines ended up in our lives.

    "....men having the form of godliness, creeping into households making captives of gullible women..."could Paul have possibly been talking about G3 exactly...now there is a true prophet for you if the answer is yes! It's yes.

    Keep the spotlight on the scoundrels, the sheep don't have a chance without folks like us... ALL their shepherds turned out to be wolves in sheep's clothing... AGAIN!

    Mike Maynard
    Publisher
    The True Doctrine of Christ Foundation

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  5. The True Doctrine of Christ Foundation

    ....I still get cautious whenever I see the word "True" in a religious context. Kinda like "Plain" and "Real", "Living" and "United"

    "He who knows, does not say...he who says...does not know" sometimes. DCD

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  6. You have a point about the term "true" however I have spent several years deprogramming myself so I can simply parrot the writing of the Apostles of the original Church. I have to rewrite and edit out bias that creeps in frequently. I am praying I can stay neutral, if not Ill quit writing. Of course for me the term is comparative having grown up under Armstrongism.

    I am not a church and ask for no money....the cause of what seems to me the source of the problems in religion today.

    Mike Maynard
    The True Doctrine of Christ

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  7. Dennis, as former longtime members and local elder, we empathize so much with you, and the pain we see expressed as you recount the horrible legacy of HWA and his impact in destroying so many lives.
    It is also refreshing to see Michael Maynard's site and the efforts he is taking to reveal the joy and freedom of "Grace". So good to see! We left WCG 13years ago after we saw for the first real time, the message of Grace leap out from the pages of the NT. I awoke one day to discover hey, my love for my wife, and her love for me is not based on a bunch of very inadequate laws and regulations that we each must adhere to. The unconditional love simply produces a natural outpouring of responses... nothing to do with law whatsoever! This is the message that the law keepers are blind to...Love and Grace cannot be legislated...it is free and unconditional!

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  8. Len: I do agree with you. I guess I have this empty spot on the topic of Grace as well because I grew up Presbyterian where it's the old old story and what WCG merely reinvented. But growing up in the Grace environment was boring. I never learned what the Bible said on lots of other topics. That's where WCG hooked me. It seemed more interesting and correct and one can also find plenty of law in the NT.

    I am convinced Paul was anti Jewish perhaps due to a bad experience of his own. He grew up in a pagan city and compiled a Jesus that matched his dying/rising god background. However, we also Paul quoting that the law is good. Most feel that books attributed to Paul, 2 Thess, 1/2 Timothy etc, were not actually written by Paul but Paul-like believers who needed to put some law back in the grace thing.

    I have found that in time, those who trust in law, need grace for being unable to keep it and those that promote grace in need of law to control their free spiritism.

    Paul preached Grace in Corinth and all hell broke loose in the church when they did everything they dam well pleased..

    YOU CAN"T WIN! :)

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  9. Mr. Malm seems to fit the real definition of obsessive:

    The two trees!
    The two trees!
    The two trees!

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  10. This bunch can't even bring themselves to say the word "Jesus"

    The COG's over all have the same difficulty. It is always CHRIST! Gotta have that hard "KA" "RICE" "TA" to it.

    "Jesus" just sound too namby pamby, "fellows and girls, and I mean that...." :)

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  11. Douglas, you are close but not quite.

    "Elohim is a uniplural ......"

    I think there must have been a vegetable god known as "Let-tus"...who was told to "make man in our image , after our likeness..."

    Of course, El who was head of the Council of the gods known as the Elohim and who originally was Canaanite in origin, told humans to lay off the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life

    THESE WERE GOD FOOD TREES AND NOT FOR HUMANS. The knowledge of good and evil was NOT for humans and eternal life certainly was not. Shocked by the humans now having god knowledge....they got booted out let they "become like us and live forever.."

    There is NO JESUS in the vegetable god "Let-tus" ")

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  12. Much ado about nothing again.

    We need FAITH plus WORKS. Faith without works is dead.

    As long as one hates (COG) others, they cannot even know their Creator.

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  13. Now even a "former Pasadena WCG employee" is not immune to HWA/COG-hate attacks.

    Reminds of the certifiable Nam-vets Terry Silva and John Kreese mindless attacking little Daniel LaRusso in Karate Kid III.

    Very sad but still laughable.

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  14. We need FAITH plus WORKS. Faith without works is dead.

    This exactly points out the differences in the NT between the Jewish Church under Peter, James, John and the Apostle Paul

    The book of James, which contains the above quote is a broadside at Paul's less than works oriented faith.

    You can't really be an honestly grown up Christian until one see's these men were at odds with each other doctrinally and in most every way. Today James and Paul are somehow viewed as teaching the same thing. Luke tries to wed the two with his Acts of the Apostles (mostly Paul) making Paul look closer to the Jewish Jameson Church. Paul was not close to James and had a completely different Gospel.

    As I said before, Jesus of the Gospels would not recognize Paul's theology and the no one can recognize the Gospel Jesus portrayed in the Book of Revelation.

    So the NT contains at least three major Jesus'

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  15. Watcher writes: "Now even a "former Pasadena WCG employee" is not immune to HWA/COG-hate attacks."

    WCG has had many employees were mentally unstable. For some reason Pasadena attracted a lot of them! They eventually were either fired or left to join some whacky splinter cult or to started their own cult where they attempted to atract a following of likewise distrubed peoeple.

    There were serious concerns at Pasadena that mentally distraught individuals would go on shooting sprees, especially after the murders in Meridith's cult.

    Armstrongism has never offered hope to it's members. Just endless lists of things you cannot do and that you are never good enough for a god that is ready with giddy delight to throw you into the 'lake of fire.'

    When the leadership of the COG is dealing with mental issues, alcoholism, sexual issues, power/control issues, and many other issues you can be guaranteed that like minded people will be attracted to them.

    Just look at the various cult leaders of Armstrongism like Flurry, Cox, Pack, Weinland, and Meredith. There are serious mental health issues that these people have never dealt with. Narcissism, schizophrenia, split personalities and other issues plague the them and the COG's.

    When you see the name 'apostle', 'watchman', 'Elijah', 'two witnesses', 'Ezekiel witness', and 'end time prophet', attached to any COG man's name you need to run like hell in the opposite direction!

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  16. Regarding:

    How The Law Of God Sent The God Haters Into Fits Of Rage Today

    Just out of curiosity, exactly what is it about the Ten Commandments that you do not like?

    What sins do you so earnestly desire to commit, and why?

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  17. The 'ten commandments' are so very much lacking and so elementary...kind of simple rules for little children..."when I was a child, etc"
    They simply do NOT address the "sins of the Heart", the really big stuff and the main concern of Christ.
    - gossiping
    - pride
    - jealousy
    - intolerance
    - greed
    - controlling others
    - impatience
    - unkindness
    - cheating
    - boasting
    - complaining
    - unthankfulness
    - just plain meanness
    - etc. etc.
    - the list goes on and on ad infinitum to much more that ten....

    These are the things that count. These are only addressed by the "New Law of Love"! It's time to grow up and get it!

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  18. "Just out of curiosity, exactly what is it about the Ten Commandments that you do not like?"


    Just out of curiosity, how many of "God's Laws" do you blatantly ignore on a daily basis? Most of them, I would wager. HWA constructed a hodge-podge basket lifted from the Torah, that he called "God's Law." If one wants to take an honest, objective look at the Bible, you'll see that "God's Laws" are all the commandments given in the Torah, not just the Ten Commandments and a couple more that HWA saw were "doable." The rest were thrown out under misleading labels like "ceremonial laws." So in effect, a good little HWA-lemming is no different than a Baptist when it comes to breaking "God's Laws." You don't get brownie point for observing one more extra than the rest.

    But I forget....Christ died so you could break "God's Law" and still retain your salvation. Christ died so you could try and fail to keep the Law. Grace = Free Pass From Breaking The Law. You see, God realized that the Law he set up was impossible to obey perfectly, so he asked Jesus to get killed so that God could remove the penalty everytime you break it.

    Paul Ray

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  19. Those who have been weaned from the milk of the word and moved on to the meat know that Grace is extended by God as unmerited pardon to show His exceeding greatness and unfathomable love for all mankind.

    Love under the new covenant has NO desire to DO ANYTHING TO HARM HIS NEIGHBOR IN ANY WAY! We who have God's Holy Spirit have it within us to choose to do the same thing that we would want our neighbor to do to us, without a penalty involved.

    I would never sleep with my neighbors wife because it would hurt My neighbor and his family as well as my wife and my family. I would not want him doing that to me, that therefore GOVERNS my life, it is the LAW within me.

    Is that so foreign?

    It is the Holy Spirit that brings that power not just hollow empty words like law, faith, grace, or works but the power behind these concepts that dwells within the heart of a believer.

    I guess it is foreign to many who still sing, "oh how love I thy law". Unless it is actually fulfilling the WHOLE LAW under the new covenant which is simply put, Love your neighbor as yourself.

    Michael Maynard
    The True Doctrine of Christ Foundation

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