The Philadelphia Church of God likes to represents its self as God's greatest ministry on the earth today. The public face they present is one of idolatry towards all things Herbert Armstrong. When you really looking to PCG and its beliefs and method of operation it is clear who is the priority and it is NOT God or Jesus. Jesus particularly gets relegated to the boonies as Herbert Armstrong is elevated to deity status. There seems to be nothing the man ever did that was wrong.
To drive that point him here is a partial scan from the ministerial resume form for ministers in India. There is nothing to tick off where you believe in God or Jesus but plenty of places to pay homnage to Gerald Flurry and Herbert Armstrong.. You can see more ministerial resumes at the COG splinter cult Gentile Assembly.
Who's Gerlad Flurry? LOL!
ReplyDeleteIt's a pile of confused rubbish over there at the Gentile Assembly but as near as I can tell, they are going on something about Gerald Flurry is the man of sin, the PCG is the Laodocean Church, the UCG is going into spiritual death and the sins of the CoGs are causing the major natural disasters.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, it's nuts.
Still, the ideas they have do have a lot of appeal.
Have to love the mud slinging.
This is better than politics.
In the SDA church, they still have as one of their official 27 fundamental doctrines, that in order to be baptised in the faith, you must accept Ellen G. White as an end time prophetess.
ReplyDeleteAbout 90%+ of all SDA pastors conveniently and deliberately do not require that of those who they baptize.
If Flurryism were to remnant on for 100 years, it would be the same way. The nuttiness of Flurry and Armstrong would be conveniently forgotten and disguised , just like the nuttiness of Ellen G. White is generally dismissed.
Joe Moeller
Cody, WY
#9 is a trick question. If they answer "yes" they are drummed out of the cult, because they accepted an impostor as That Prophet!
ReplyDeleteWhen you stop and think about it, HWA could have gotten away with just about anything. Even if he had been caught in major sin, his followers and successors would give him a pass. Nobody would believe that his doctrines lead to bad fruits, cavalier attitudes to the rest of humanity, or just plain megalomania, either.
ReplyDeleteBB
From recent Exit and Support Network reports: It looks like Flurry's lapdog Alex Harrison is performing his destruction ritual spell on Trinidad this year.
ReplyDeleteGerald Flurry doesn't care about Indian people or Trinidadians.
The recently canned Flurryite minister, Aaron Eagle remains a member, but should consider scratching out Flurry's name, and write-in David C. Pack. It may be his only option strategy; since he long ago, burned the bridge back to the LCG rock from whence he came.
ReplyDeleteThe Gentile Assembly? Sounds like a bunch of darkies in a bathhouse.
ReplyDeleteGerald.
Okay, so who's "Gerlad" Flurry? Methinks Six-Pack would be none too pleased if he saw that!
ReplyDeleteNon ordained non prophet Bob once pointed out that non ordained non prophet Gerald's had no business requiring that people believe in him before they attend services or are baptized because these were not biblical requirements for attending services or baptism. Bob was right. But I wonder if Bob's members are required to read Bob's literature and believe he is a prophet? What would he do to them if they don't. Well, Bob, what's your answer? The same question goes for all of those churches. Can I go to LCG if I don't think Rod is an evangelist or read his magazines?
ReplyDeleteByker Bob said: "...When you stop and think about it, HWA could have gotten away with just about anything. Even if he had been caught in major sin, his followers and successors would give him a pass..."
ReplyDeleteUmm you're being sarcastic right Bob? 'Cause the last time I looked Armstrong DID get away with major sin(S), including 100s of false prophecies, stealing of members money (falsely called "tithes"), adultery and incest(!) and yet his followers whitewash his dishonest reputation and disastrous record as if he was Christ Jesus Himself!
And Joe it doesn't surprise me that Adventists have an official requirement that prospective members believe White was a "prophetess" this condition (like the ACOGs believing HWA was "the Elijah to come" or a "prophet" or was "used by God" etc) is typical of cults and really nothing more than idolatry.
See FAF
Question 10:"Can down a 6 pack while sitting in your car for an hour or less?"
ReplyDeleteAnonymous &:19, one of the mental processes which I undergo in preparing my posts is to attempt to put myself in the place of some of the die hards who inaccurately believe that HWA was God's endtime apostle, a quasi-Biblical figure for our times. We know he sinned bigtime, or at the very least seriously violated what he taught to us. No question about that, based on eyewitness testimony from those who worked in his home, those who were part of his travel entourage on the Gulfstream, and his grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteBut, we also know that if we expose these things in a direct and positive manner, the diehards will contest it and get all tied up in that, when in fact their time would be better spent reinvestigating British Israelism, doing a concordance-style exhaustive Bible study on circumcision and the implications of its abolition as related to the shadows of the Old Covenant, to say nothing of the nature and functions of God the Holy Spirit, as an all-knowing interactive being who relates on every level to the experiences of inborn believers.
The big problem with Armstrongism is the way in which people came into Armstrongism, ie, how it was marketed. You can sum it up in one word: trapped. A spiritual experience cannot be had as a function of being trapped. Such an experience would be completely meaningless as even our courts of law recognize in decisions or signatures which were caused by duress.
BB
"Can I go to LCG if I don't think Rod is an evangelist"
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the Church prior to the splits, and we had a hard time believing Spanky was an evangelist.
" a concordance-style exhaustive Bible study on circumcision"
ReplyDeleteUh, Bob? When I was growing up, the Church never taught circumcision...rather the passage from the NT about "being circumcised in our hearts" was stated as referring to the prophecy in the OT where God promises He will write His law on our hearts (also promised in Revelation, when everyone will know God face to face). I mean, that's what I remember hearing, when I was growing up.
If the Church taught circumcision when you were in, they absolutely changed that, several years later.
"The big problem with Armstrongism is the way in which people came into Armstrongism, ie, how it was marketed. You can sum it up in one word: trapped. A spiritual experience cannot be had as a function of being trapped."
ReplyDeleteVery well said. As succinct as is it accurate. This is the exact reason why Armstrongism is empty and devoid of value.
people forget that religion is big business in India (and Africa)......most churches are nothing more than private clubs, social events...and quite profitable.......those folks by and large don't understand what they're doing, they're just looking for an organization they can use to support their families.
ReplyDeleteUmm Velvet re physical circumcision I believe the WCG did teach that it was a health law and thus advocated it. Personally I got circumcised because of this and know of others who did too along with their sons (eg Eze. 44:9 comes to mind as typically used in support). But, knowing what I know now that it is an unnecessary ritual and has nothing to do with salvation I'd probably not have had it done since it wasn't a command for mankind in general (otherwise Adam would've been snipped too).
ReplyDeleteYes, there certainly were grown men in the Pasadena congregation who got circumcised prior to getting married. They did it because the church emphasized the health aspects, much the same as they did with clean and unclean meats.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that's not what I was getting at. The fact is the words used to stress the importance and perpetuity of circumcision from a covenant standpoint, starting with Abraham, (lynchpin of the Abrahamic covenant) are the very same words used to describe the same aspects surrounding the sabbath (which many consider to be the lynchpin of the Old Covenant, or Mosaic Covenant. Yet, we know that circumcision was spiritually expanded for the Gentiles by the first Jerusalem Council, erasing the physical. Some see this same process as having taken place with expanding the physical sabbath into what Paul describes as being the Christian's sabbath rest.
Of course, Armstrongism never applied words such as "fulfilled", or "expanded" to Old Testament law. In ridiculing and mocking modern Christians, HWA and his minions stated that "Christians falsely so-called" regard God's laws as having been "done away."
Remember, regardless of his self-aggrandizing claims, HWA was largely self-taught in the field of theology. Anyone want a self-taught physician operating on them?
BB