CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Many will not forget the early morning hours of Saturday March 3, 2012 in the Reedy Creek neighborhood. Around 2:34 a.m. a EF-2 tornado with winds of around 135 mph touched down with a path of destruction 200 yards wide and 3.2 miles long. A total of 192 homes were damaged or destroyed...
Was God punishing Charlotte North Caroling on Saturday Sabbath because of the presence of the Living Church of God headquarters? Was Satan out after the town because of LCG represents the only true Christians on the face of the earth??
Pretty soon we will hear Prophet Thiel and LCG claiming God protected their headquarters from the tornado and that no members were hurt or had property damage because God had protected them.
I guess in their minds it is OK for God to protect them while pulling a child from his bed and dropping along side the a freeway and destroying homes, churches and business buildings.
The best thing LCG could do is keep silent on this because what ever they say will make them out to be hypocritical fools.
Tornadoes confirmed in 4 NC, SC counties; 5 dead, 10+ hurt in Carolinas
6 comments:
Actually the original twister was coming down on my apt building here in Greenville. I could see a Satan face in it too. But I got up all my leftover powers and rebuked it 90 more miles up the interstate to Charlotte.
This kind can only touch down with prayer and fasting...
When a Baptist falls off his house on Saturday, it is Satan testing him. When they fall off the roof on a Sunday, it is God sending a message. COG types, please reverse the days.
M.T.Trailers
I once asked a long-time COG minister and good friend about the common refrain in the COG about "praying for our brethren" where natural disasters had occurred, and how the language was typically "we're grateful that none of our brethren were harmed," with seeming little concern for those outside our belief system.
Why weren't we concerned with all people in those situations? Why didn't we pray for people outside the COG universe, too, instead of just "brethren?" Why weren't COG members active in helping others less fortunate, saving lives, and reaching out to serve where help was needed -- regardless of beliefs or church affiliation (if there even was one).
I wondered what he would say, because he himself had just used the "brethren" limitations in communication with those he pastored.
He responded -- quite sincerely, I'm sure -- with something to the effect that "those are the ones we are most concerned with" and "we can't be expected to pray for everybody."
I marveled at the myopia. And I was totally uncomfortable with the pride and illogic that interfered with the exercise of pure, undefiled religion. Such a shame.
Any natural disaster, accident, or disease can be instruments of use. It's just a matter of what you are trying to accomplish and how you frame the situation.
It's just a more personal version of that old The Plain Truth style of news reporting. The one where you report some otherwise unimportant fact because you can fit it in to prophecy or illustrate some strange Armstrong teaching.
Deacon:
One prays for the brethren in the area and for their safety because:
We do care about those we know
We hope their home has not been destroyed because we might have to help in real time.
We hope they did not lose home and job because it will affect income for the church.
The book says that prayers be made for all men, but especially those of the household of faith. This goes back 2000 years where the brethren were always a cut above common folk.
DCP would have nuts had he been pastoring in Louisiana during Katrina. Entire churches gone and unable to have any income for years. While it certainly is not about the numbers of weekly attendees, for DCP it always is and the numbers would have been horrible.
Declaring God's mercy on "his people" is a way, consciously or subconsciously of saying, 'See, God thinks your special and will protect you, IF you stay faithful," etc.
Many "miraculous' storm stories happen to most people who are in storms. The ones killed are the ones we no longer hear much about because they are gone as is their usefulness for faith building.
I asked a minister who gave a miraculous "God saved our member's child" story to not say that again in such a large crowd. I told him the 25 families in the audience, out of thousands who did not have God's deliverance for their kids in car accidents, drownings etc were about to vomit in their own guilt over why they did not deserve God's intervention. Grieving parents in fundy churches do not understand the concept of "time and chance." They take it as a rebuke, or as the woman pounding on me with her fists as they pulled her YOU church kid out from under the tractor, "why why why??? I know we don't study and pray as we should...."
It was sad and not true.
In the minds of CoG people, everything that happens is always interpreted as the direct result of spiritual forces at work. When it comes to God's people, the natural laws of cause and effect, and the random walk built into the universe are all suspended. It's really just superstition, and no different than an ancient pagan’s outlook, such as thunderbolts being thrown by an angry Zeus and the like.
When something good happens it is always the direct result of God taking time out of his day to give you a blessing, or else Satan's hand being stayed. When something bad happens it is always the direct result of either God punishing you for your unfaithfulness or Satan attacking you because you are faithful. People seem to believe that Satan usually waits until the holy days to attack most people, though.
When Solomon said in Ecclesiastes that time and chance happens to all men, I have heard CoG people say, no, that means time and chance happens to all people EXCEPT CoG people. Even though this is not what it says, this is how they have to read it because this is what they believe in, regardless of what the bible might say.
If a CoG person were to go into a casino and gamble and lose a lot of money, they would say that he sinned and God isn't going to protect a person from Satan's attack in such cases, so of course Satan took his money. But if he won a lot of money instead, they would say that God was allowing Satan to deceive him and entice him into a dissolute life, or something like that. But random chance? Never!
They think that God is only working with HIS people now, and he doesn't really care what happens to anyone else, because He's not working with them. So, CoG people don't have to care either. Yes, it’s true that Jesus said that everyone is your neighbor, and when you take care of the least of them, it is as though you’ve done it to Him. Oh, but that only applies to people in the church, I guess. Those outside the church can starve for all they care. They don’t believe that God cares either. They’re just going to come up in the second resurrection anyway, and God can care then.
It's funny how all the same things happen to everyone across the board, with the same statistical probabilities. But in one person's case it's all caused by the direct action of the spirit world at work and in another person's case, it's all caused by random chance.
But the really ironic thing about this hierarchy of spiritual supersition is that compared to the ministers, the average CoG person doesn’t matter either. Yes, God might be working with the laymembers, and they might be His chosen people, but he’s not working with them like He’s working with the MINISTERS! The ministers will never tell the laymembers that they believe this, but you can tell they do by their behavior. From the minister’s point of view, the chasm between God’s chosen people (laymembers) and those that God doesn’t care about (“the unconverted”) seems to be about equal to the chasm between ministers and laymembers.
If you watch the behavior of the ministers over a long period of time, and see which rules they bend and which ones they suspend altogether (only for themselves, of course) it becomes pretty obvious that they don’t believe what the bible says. The only things they believe in are money, privilege, and church rank, and that God will respect and continue that for eternity. Serving your fellow man? Puh-LEEZ!
I guess Jesus was pretty on the money with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Who passed by the wounded man, the Priest ! Who helped him, a Samaritan, who would be in the class of the unconverted today. What an accurate description of COG ministers. I hate the way they ignore all the disasters and calamities in the world.
When will God judge these guys and in the immortal words of Bille Burke-The Good Witch of the North, "Be gone, before someone drops a house on you !"
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