Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
Where does Armstrongism fit into this picture? Since many do not belive much of what Jesus said, did, or the concepts he was trying to get across, where do they fall?
Giving a talk this evening to interested friends on the story of Jesus as astro-theology. Whoever Jesus was, if was, would have been nice if he could have written something. Long story but the Gospels, not actually written by the Four, but originally anonymous, are not eyewitness accounts and don't agree. That makes it all suspect or at least merely a dramatic form of hearsay.
If the Aposte Paul never met or quoted any human Jesus, back then, how can I know more than he did?
Matthew's Jesus was a composite human built of old testament scriptures and badly cobbled verses. The Proof Text Jesus.
My views are well known so I simply say that , to me,and after years of looking at it, I suspect Jesus is fiction. Some ask to pick if he was lunitic, liar or Lord? We can't leave out Legend and that's where I am at the moment.
All said about Jesus is by others who don't seem to know him in reality, time and space.
With Matthew copying 94 % of Mark and Luke 50+%, that's hardly inspiration or eyewitness stuff.
I vote legend for now. Cobbled together in both birth and death from the OT scriptures (which is why they seem prophetic but are not) and done so badly by making the OT mean what it never meant.
Jesus seems to be another Sun Godman. One of many in the past.
...and his story is yet again the story of the one year trip of the Sun of God around the and through the 12 signs of the Zodiac from Birth to Death and risen again.
No doubt it will be difficult to get comments on this topic. It has always been interesting to me that when genuine Biblical topics here on the problems with OT and NT stories, errors, contradictions, bad analogies, origins etc, there is little comment.
When a WCG/COG issue such as the rantings of a minister, apostle, watcher, prophet, priest or wanna be king, we all explode with comments. I do it myself.
It is difficult to commit to such a concept and question as this because:
It feels wrong to question Jesus as presented in the Bible
It feels frightful to think it's just a story
It reignites our fears over loss of meaning and purpose.
It reignites our deeply fear of death and the need to "know" we will be ok after death and better than ever. (Maybe we will be)
It's too personal to reveal such inner doubts or believing faith.
We believe it as advertised for the most part but have doubts as well and need to keep up a good front.
We don't want God, Christ or Jesus to be angry with us in some what that puts us on the wrong side of salvation, if we doubt.
Few actually do their homework well enough to have an educated view of the problems with the story as presented.
"God said it, I believe it, that does it for me," works just fine.
"I choose to believe it no matter and if I am wrong it won't matter. If I am right, I win."
I have no personal illusions that no matter what denomination I had been a pastor in, these same questions would have finally had to be faced for me personally. In a more professional setting, the wake up may have come sooner, but I was going to have this crisis of faith no matter. Of this I am sure.
Anyway, give it a shot. It's a good question.
Even Jesus family in Mark, at least, came to get Jesus, "because they thought he was mad." The other three edited this probably true story as it is so negative, out of the text. This would be understandable. The Birth stories cleaned doubting Mary up real fast!
Legend/fiction, yes, either one or both. Which makes me truly question the sanity of those who believe they have a "personal relationship" with Jesus. Yeah, right.
Faith is a concept which objectivists somehow just can't wrap their minds around.
All I can say is that I've received some really awesome healing and blessings over the past several years. No bitterness, no urge to retaliate or punish others, and vastly diminished need for ego.
But, I also understand compartmentalization and the wall which one often builds to prevent a reoccurrence of abuse.
Im still undecided to some extent. The biblical account seems to me to be the least feasible of all, and the gnostic writers don't clear up much of the story.
Other stories such as Epic of Gilgamesh, Mithraism, zoroastrianism and even writings of Plato and Homer make much more sense. At least there aren't so many questionable and unexplained gaps in those stories.
I sort of think Astrotheology was fabricated from facts mixed with old numbers theories as explained by Protagoras.
I'm not sure whether the numbers themes in the Old Testament were set up before Protagoras' numbers were established but just too many coincidences in these and the Mayan calendars and the numerical equations in the pyramids.
The Bible seems to be a mishmash of many older theories, all arranged with just enough factual information to make it seem a possibility if we could only receive some guidance from a prophet who can unravel the "mystery".
Going on facts along, I have to discount the Bible altogether.
Another possible reason why people here tend not to discuss their feelings on whether Jesus was a real person or a fabrication may be due to the fact that we were all wrong when we fell for the Worldwide story so now we fear that we just might be wrong again. There is the feeling that we might mislead others no matter how unintentionally.
Add this to all the other reasons you've listed, and I think we can see why these (most interesting to me) topics die a sudden death.
To me, it really doesn't matter whether Jesus is a real historical figure, the real son of God, or neither. If I have followed all the theories, and I haven't found him, then it doesn't matter if I want to have a relationship with Him or not, I can't. If He does exist, He doesn't seem to be interested in having a relationship with me. But if anything changes, I guess He would know where to find me. In the mean time, I can't justify spending the second half of my life continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.
9 comments:
Giving a talk this evening to interested friends on the story of Jesus as astro-theology. Whoever Jesus was, if was, would have been nice if he could have written something. Long story but the Gospels, not actually written by the Four, but originally anonymous, are not eyewitness accounts and don't agree. That makes it all suspect or at least merely a dramatic form of hearsay.
If the Aposte Paul never met or quoted any human Jesus, back then, how can I know more than he did?
Matthew's Jesus was a composite human built of old testament scriptures and badly cobbled verses. The Proof Text Jesus.
My views are well known so I simply say that , to me,and after years of looking at it, I suspect Jesus is fiction. Some ask to pick if he was lunitic, liar or Lord? We can't leave out Legend and that's where I am at the moment.
All said about Jesus is by others who don't seem to know him in reality, time and space.
With Matthew copying 94 % of Mark and Luke 50+%, that's hardly inspiration or eyewitness stuff.
I vote legend for now. Cobbled together in both birth and death from the OT scriptures (which is why they seem prophetic but are not) and done so badly by making the OT mean what it never meant.
Jesus seems to be another Sun Godman. One of many in the past.
...and his story is yet again the story of the one year trip of the Sun of God around the and through the 12 signs of the Zodiac from Birth to Death and risen again.
No doubt it will be difficult to get comments on this topic. It has always been interesting to me that when genuine Biblical topics here on the problems with OT and NT stories, errors, contradictions, bad analogies, origins etc, there is little comment.
When a WCG/COG issue such as the rantings of a minister, apostle, watcher, prophet, priest or wanna be king, we all explode with comments. I do it myself.
It is difficult to commit to such a concept and question as this because:
It feels wrong to question Jesus as presented in the Bible
It feels frightful to think it's just a story
It reignites our fears over loss of meaning and purpose.
It reignites our deeply fear of death and the need to "know" we will be ok after death and better than ever. (Maybe we will be)
It's too personal to reveal such inner doubts or believing faith.
We believe it as advertised for the most part but have doubts as well and need to keep up a good front.
We don't want God, Christ or Jesus to be angry with us in some what that puts us on the wrong side of salvation, if we doubt.
Few actually do their homework well enough to have an educated view of the problems with the story as presented.
"God said it, I believe it, that does it for me," works just fine.
"I choose to believe it no matter and if I am wrong it won't matter. If I am right, I win."
I have no personal illusions that no matter what denomination I had been a pastor in, these same questions would have finally had to be faced for me personally. In a more professional setting, the wake up may have come sooner, but I was going to have this crisis of faith no matter. Of this I am sure.
Anyway, give it a shot. It's a good question.
Even Jesus family in Mark, at least, came to get Jesus, "because they thought he was mad." The other three edited this probably true story as it is so negative, out of the text. This would be understandable. The Birth stories cleaned doubting Mary up real fast!
What's your view of Jesus DB?
Dennis,
Legend/fiction, yes, either one or both. Which makes me truly question the sanity of those who believe they have a "personal relationship" with Jesus. Yeah, right.
AnnMarie95
I haven't made up my mind yet.
Thanks for asking.
Faith is a concept which objectivists somehow just can't wrap their minds around.
All I can say is that I've received some really awesome healing and blessings over the past several years. No bitterness, no urge to retaliate or punish others, and vastly diminished need for ego.
But, I also understand compartmentalization and the wall which one often builds to prevent a reoccurrence of abuse.
BB
Im still undecided to some extent. The biblical account seems to me to be the least feasible of all, and the gnostic writers don't clear up much of the story.
Other stories such as Epic of Gilgamesh, Mithraism, zoroastrianism and even writings of Plato and Homer make much more sense. At least there aren't so many questionable and unexplained gaps in those stories.
I sort of think Astrotheology was fabricated from facts mixed with old numbers theories as explained by Protagoras.
I'm not sure whether the numbers themes in the Old Testament were set up before Protagoras' numbers were established but just too many coincidences in these and the Mayan calendars and the numerical equations in the pyramids.
The Bible seems to be a mishmash of many older theories, all arranged with just enough factual information to make it seem a possibility if we could only receive some guidance from a prophet who can unravel the "mystery".
Going on facts along, I have to discount the Bible altogether.
Another possible reason why people here tend not to discuss their feelings on whether Jesus was a real person or a fabrication may be due to the fact that we were all wrong when we fell for the Worldwide story so now we fear that we just might be wrong again. There is the feeling that we might mislead others no matter how unintentionally.
Add this to all the other reasons you've listed, and I think we can see why these (most interesting to me) topics die a sudden death.
To me, it really doesn't matter whether Jesus is a real historical figure, the real son of God, or neither. If I have followed all the theories, and I haven't found him, then it doesn't matter if I want to have a relationship with Him or not, I can't. If He does exist, He doesn't seem to be interested in having a relationship with me. But if anything changes, I guess He would know where to find me. In the mean time, I can't justify spending the second half of my life continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.
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