Did you know that your belief in HWA being the end time Elijah determines your salvation? If you do not believe he was then your salvation is at stake. You will be heading to the lake of fire ASAP!
The nuttiness continues in Armstrongism:
I would advise all to not get to comfortable in organizations or groups that do not believe Mr. Armstrong was the End Time Elijah, on this your mortal soul depends. For those that would ridicule me for what I have said, I would again point out, that the belief that Mr. Armstrong was the End Time Elijah is not the one factor, it is like a litmus test and points to your standing in The One True Church. Elijah Forum Yahoo
One week the litmus test for "true" Christians is Sabbath keeping. The next is whether you keep the Holy Days. Then it might be whether or not you eat pork and shellfish.
Jesus is never part of the equation to these people.
17 comments:
Unfortunately, there are too many people who believe that we must believe that HWA was the end time Elijah or we can't be saved.
I was one of them, but far from alone. We go from organization to organization that believes this. PCG, RCG, COGFF....finally, after striking out three or more times...I and several others I know have moved on.
Where did Christ ever teach this stupidity? It is not Biblical and keeps you in a dark place. It's impossible to grow spiritually with this kind of thinking. The Bible becomes a closed book and all you do is follow Armstrongism and church tradition and not the Word Of God.
It is so sad that there are still people that are locked into such blind devotion to this pervert. A man that had sex with his daughter should not be worshiped but should have been arested and put behind bars. He should have rotted in jail!!!
Your salvation depends on whether or not you realize that Herbert Armstrong was a sociopath.
.'"Did you go yourself and examine this, or how do you know?"'
[Socrates 469 - 399 B.C.E.].
"The history of the world is the history of fanaticism. "
"Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment, says Seneca".
[Seneca the Younger 4 B.C.E.? - 65 C.E.].
"the faithful gain prestige through managing to believe even more ridiculous things than their rivals succeed in believing. "
"Convinced that they know the truth--whether in religion or in politics--enthusiasts may regard lies for the sake of this truth as justifiable. "
"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church [...]a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.
--Martin Luther cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, vol. I. "
"The belief that the dogma itself is true, and that it is, moreover, beneficial for the convert, will seem to excuse a lie told to speed conversion. "
"But will it be pretended that these are only metaphors of speech, that the thing said is not the thing that's meant. Why, then, they are very ugly metaphors. And what is saying that which you don't mean, and meaning the contrary to what you say, but LYING?*
John 8:44-45
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
That's either Armstrongism or the 2012 elections -- take your pick.
He should have rotted in jail!!!
I doubt that he would have survived very long: Even in prison, there is a, shall we say, a certain ethic and child molesters are at the very bottom of the social order there.
Even in the 1930s he would have been put to death in prison very quickly, had the news of what he was convicted for got around.
And that would have saved us all... a lot of trouble.
Unfortunately there are too many like that poor decieved soul hanging around the Church.
They mean well, but their object of worship is a man, not God.
I think the true members of the Church are pretty much invisible. They quietly live their lives in accordance to God's law. They do not draw a lot of attention to themselves at Church. They follow Jesus, not the minister.
Dr. Bob has made similar statements on his site, saying that unless one believes as HWA did they cannot be part of the Church. The deception reaches up to the highest levels in some organizations.
We are told in the bible to prove all things, to follow our leaders as they follow Christ. I wish more did that.
"the belief that Mr. Armstrong was the End Time Elijah is not the one factor, it is like a litmus test and points to your standing in The One True Church."
"The One True Church" must be equivalent to "The Body of Christ," agreed? Let's see. So, how do you know if you are a part of "The Body of Christ?" Obviously, you know if you are a part of "The Body of Christ" if you are a follower of...Herbert w Armstrong.
Was Noah a part of "The Body of Christ? "Was Abraham a part of "The Body of Christ?" How about the first century apostles? Were they a part of "The Body of Christ?"
Well, it's simple, let's just apply the litmus test. Sadly, Noah, Abraham, and the apostles could not have been a part of "The Body of Christ" because they never heard of and never worshiped "The End Time Elijah," Herbert w Armstrong.
Unfortunately, belief in God, following God, Jesus's sacrifice, etc. is necessary, but not sufficient to be a part of "The One True Church."
Seems legit. Makes sense to me.
Anon 8:27 AM wrote:
"The deception reaches up to the highest levels in some organizations."
Nooo. The deception is not a grassroots deception that permeates upward. The deception is, like all things in Armstrongism, from the TOP-DOWN. The deception permeates down from the top to the very lowest levels in ALL the organizations. That's how ministers make their money, donchaknow?
Dr. Bob has made similar statements on his site, saying that unless one believes as HWA did they cannot be part of the Church. The deception reaches up to the highest levels in some organizations.
The top leaders in Dr. Bob's own group know full well of HWA's incest, as well as the lengths HWA went to to have satisfying sex with Ramona. They do not worship HWA, they only worship his methods. For example, just like HWA, they have a very different standard for themselves than they do for the ordinary members. Much like in COG-PKG and in PCG, the "royal family" uses member tithes to engage in conduct that would get any ordinary member disfellowshipped.
Weinland and Meredith and Flurry are willing to change HWA's doctrines, but they hold fast to HWA's version of the Golden Rule -- that whoever has the gold gets to make the rules.
I would advise ALL to stay extremely far away from organizations or groups that believe Mr. Armstrong was the End Time Elijah or believe a watered-down "sanitized" version of this belief. It's purely IDOL WORSHIP in the same vein as Catholics and Protestants who go to any lengths to support their morally bankrupt religious system or pedophiliac priests, popes and politicians. All of these cultish systems worship men, their teachings or their institutions--they fail to see that Christ Jesus came so we could have a direct relationship with God as our Father through HIM as our Mediator not via some guy in a cheap suit or having our membership in his "church."
"Mr." Armstrong?
What is this, SEP?
Yeah, what's this "Mr." stuff. Don't you know that's a just a variant of "master?"
It's was just semantic garbage that we insisted on using "Mr." instead of "Rev." A big to do about nothing. But, they were very insistent on being referred to that way. Much more than most other "ministers" are insistent on "Rev."
Thankfully, anyone's salvation never depended upon believing HWA was some "End Time Elijah!" To believe such a thing would make Christ out to be a liar as He said John the Baptist was "the man!"
And the disciples understood Christ to tell the truth that John the Baptist was the fulfillment:
Matthew 17:11 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.
12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.
13 Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.
Why the xcogs of today don't understand that and believe Christ's words is beyond me, because they must believe Christ lied to His disciples.
John
Here we have encapsulated there very reason why Armstrongism is a cult. Normally, a Christian, in order to discern who might be a false teacher, will compare the suspect's teachings and behavior with that of Jesus Christ. The ACOGs have made this a complete impossibility through their veneration for HWA. You can't come to the conclusion that HWA was wrong in any way and still remain a true member of an ACOG.
It's why Ron Weinland believes it's OK to evade taxes, why Gerald Flurry believes it's Christlike to initiate lawsuits rather than praying to God to resolve his issues, why none of the ACOGs will lift a finger to help victims of horrible natural disasters, and why various "leaders" build cookie cutter Embarrassing Colleges during their end times. You could add many more practices to this list, but I think the ones above do it quite nicely. My own feelings are that it's blasphemous to even suggest that HWA has anything to do with God, let alone to teach that he was some sort of quasi-divine character who should be looked to and imitated over and above Jesus.
BB
and why all of them believe it's ok to buy & sell on the Sabbath (as in, restaurants)
In my Bible study last night I ran across Jesus' admonition that his disciples not even allow people to call them teacher or rabbi, because there is only one Teacher!
If you don't gloss over these things, you can't escape knowing that God never intended for there to be an abusive, intrusive, authoritarian church government from the top down with humans as administrators. You can even glean that from what He instructed Samuel to tell the children of Israel regarding having a king!
I recently saw an old TV show from the sixties in which a hippie who has died is sent into his afterlife. He ends up in a room, in which presumably he must spend all eternity with some WWII type who incessantly plays records from that era, even while a middle aged couple watches and comments upon their slide collection of family and vacation experiences. The hippie is last seen pounding the ground and crying as the narrator explains that for individuals of a different mindset, this would actually be a rather comfortable version of heaven. I suppose that there may be some statistically negligible group of people looking forward to spending all eternity under HWA, but I'm certainly not one of them.
BB
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