Today's apparent theme of postings has centered around of bogus teachings and false authority of the Churches of God through the decades. Here is a comment from Byker Bob from a thread on an earlier post:
When Jesus didn't return as was vigorously promised and then furiously backpedalled upon back in 1975, I dumped the whole sorry mess of garbage. However, having been taught so much as fact, I still thought that much of the ancient history we were taught about paganism, pagan figures, and the infection of Christianity by these influences was basically true.
I had shelved a lot of this stuff, but when I began to revisit it due to many of the questions and actually accurate information presented on the internet, I was totally blown away by the nearly complete bogussness of the supporting materials with which we were presented. When you do your own due diligence, attempt to "prove all things", and carefully check history, you become aware that we were presented with a lying testimony, which is yet another huge reason why Armstrongism is totally NOT "God's true church"
People in the ACOG congregations would probably be disfellowshipped for presenting real facts that contradict the ACOG version, which is why ignorant people like David Pack continue to get away with teaching blatant inaccuracies and outright lies. It's seen as being an act of rebelliousness to even want to research all of this material on one's own, let alone to have a "voice" to set the facts straight. Basically, to do so is to doubt or want to contadict "God's Apostle". So, the wall is indeed quite thick and very high!
Purely and simply, Armstrongism is "religion". It's most certainly not an enlightened path leading to a personal relationship with God.
BB
Assuredly, Armstrongists can see the folly of Scientology.
ReplyDeleteL. Ron Hubbard was a moderately successful science fiction writer until the 1950s when he decided to recycle everything into Dianetics and targeted actors to come into his fabricated church. He had a pseudo alternative earth history involving Lord Xenu and people being thrown into radioactive volcanoes to become "Thetans" which must be cleared when people get possessed with them, or some such (close enough). His followers made the highly panned as the worst movie ever, "Battlefield Earth", yet again mining recycled garbage.
Yes, the typical Armstrongist would reject such teachings as totally nuts.
But Armstrongism has British Israelism and church history as its own science fictiony type of alternative world history, replete with lost tribes and Waldensians (it's amusing to think of mixing the two seamlessly, but I digress). None of that happened and it, too, is recycled garbage -- maybe from different sources, but still recycled garbage.
So here we are.
Near as I can tell, Armstrongism is Sabbath / Feast keeping Scientology.
Why can't you see that?
One review of Battlefield Earth I saw went like this: "Travolta could have saved a lot of time by setting fire to 40 million dollars instead."
ReplyDeleteRather than having spent the first half of my life in Armstrongism, I could have immolated myself. When you take into account the fact that the pain of Armstrongism got spread out over decades, it has probably been a lot more painful than the aformentioned alternative.
The ACOGs are hopelessly out of phase with the times, and probably don't even realize it.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult to say whether they were just such shoddy researchers, or whether they saw their targetted membership as as being just too weak and ignorant to ever successfully do their own research.
The minute the information superhighway became available, these folks lost a tremendous amount of influence and credibility. The old timers are hopelessly frozen in place because they are conditioned not to re-examine what they have believed to be truth, or the faith once delivered.
BB