Isn't it a miracle that the god of PCG has to meddle in such mundane things? I guess that other PCG member had to die a painful death from cancer while god was busy disabling a bulldozer.
Magical gods are fun! They jump at our commands.
One particular Sabbath morning, as Daddy read to the four of us kids (ages 2 to 12, at the time), we heard a rumbling coming down the road. It was a big truck with a trailer carrying a huge bulldozer. Daddy had lost our attention for sure. He got up and walked over to where the truck had stopped, just slightly off of our property. The man got out and began to remove the chains and binders from the huge machine as Daddy talked to him. We could see the man shaking his head. As Daddy walked away, the man continued to unchain the dozer. Daddy told us that the man was going to start clearing the land adjacent to us. He had explained what we were doing and asked if the man could start at another location, but he refused.
With the best attitude he could muster, Daddy again started to read, but I think he knew we were paying far more attention to the man unloading his big machine than we were to him. Daddy lost us completely once the dozer roared to life and began pushing over trees like they were matchsticks.
At first, he said we should go inside. But then he suddenly stopped and said, “No. We shouldn’t have to go inside, because we were trying to observe God’s Sabbath in peace and quiet.”
Daddy told us to bow our heads. He sincerely prayed aloud that he needed God’s help. He said he was teaching his children God’s way and he was trying to also keep peace in the family by not going inside, so he needed God’s help. It was the man who was breaking the Sabbath, not us. “… Amen.”
With that, Daddy asked us to sit quietly to see what would happen. It was 50 years ago, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. The bulldozer rumbled on for about five minutes after Daddy said “Amen.” Then there was a loud noise followed by a spewing sound. Then we heard the man saying some words that should not be said. The motor of that huge machine stopped, but the spewing, hissing continued. The man walked to the front of the dozer, then walked to his truck and drove away without even tying the chains and binders so they wouldn’t fall off.
As soon as he was out of sight, Daddy got up and walked to the machine. Then he called us over and told us to look at what happens when someone interferes with God’s people.
The grille on the big dozer had bars about three inches apart to protect the radiator. They were barely wide enough for the end of a limb or small tree, if it was at exactly the right angle, could just fit between the bars. One had done just that and gone completely through the radiator, stopping the dozer in its tracks.
Again, we had peace. Daddy started reading again, but only after we all knelt down and thanked God for helping us have a peaceful Sabbath.
13 comments:
The author of this article is Gene Ardis. Wonder if he's Robert Arlis' son, who is the leader of the splinter group Church of God's Faithful (CGF)?
If so, I bet Gene really misses his Daddy.
Probably from a child's perspective, this would be a really neat story. Unfortunately, there is the poor man who owned the bulldozer (one of those enemies Jesus told us to pray FOR?), and, tragically, the story was set in the bogus world of Armstrongism.
BB
I'm missing how going inside was going to disrupt peace in the family, but hey. You can't argue reason up against psychosis.
Ned Flanders?
Anonymous,
That was my very first thought. Is he related to that minister who defected from PCG?
Gene is Roberts son. I met him several years ago. He actually went with his dad's group for a little while, but "repented" and came back to PCG.
But I thought God was too busy with requests related to sporting events and lottery tickets to worry about a noisy 'dozer.
The funny thing is, that all kinds of religions have adherents who believe in all kinds of "miracle stories" they see as proving that THEIR particular god is the real one... all with little or no proof required.
Speaking of funny things...
I have an alternate ending for that bulldozer story, and it goes like this-
"[...] Daddy again started to read, but I think he knew we were paying far more attention to the man unloading his big machine than we were to him, so Daddy lost it completely and demanded we bow our heads and pray with him. Daddy's prayer went like this- O great God of Abraham Isaac and Herbert Armstrong, hear my plea. My four children are paying more attention to the bulldozer when they should be listening to the inspired words I read from Mr. Armstrong's booklet on makeup, which is the most important book since the Bible. Please strike my children down and cast them to the Lake of Fire if they continue to rebel and pay attention to the bulldozer.
Well, that got the attention of us kids!- All but my sister Mary, who continued to look at the bulldozer. Daddy had suspected Mary had a demon in her, because she said she missed celebrating Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa and getting presents. Mary also had severe asthma which had been treated with an anointed cloth instead of getting her an inhaler.
Then, a big puff of diesel smoke came from the bulldozer and went right up Mary's nose and she had an asthma attack and died while Daddy prayed again. Daddy's prayer went like this- O great God of Abraham Isaac and Herbert Armstrong, thank you for answering my prayer and delivering us from this evil child's Korah/Jezebel/Whore of Babylon satanic ways!
Then Daddy gave the bulldozer operator $10 and had him bury Mary's body deep and told us to never mourn for her.
It still gives me chills to think about the wonderful Sabbath Miracle that happened 50 years ago, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I thank God for granting us a peaceful Sabbath that day.
I wonder if this would work on the neighbor's dogs?
another seekeroftruth
Anonymous said...
I wonder if this would work on the neighbor's dogs?
Believe it or not...I know someone who believes it does! It belongs in the same insane category of those who believe God answered their prayer to find their car keys or a part for their antique car.
A test was recently conducted to determine who's lurking, its results have revealed that there's PCG authoritative power(s) who monitors this blog.
– the deception runs deep.
With regard to the Sabbath, know of a couple whose oldest went into the military (even though they tried hard to deter him). Anyway, after the training camp, came his "March Out" which was on a Friday. Plan was to spend rest of Friday and Saturday with the son as who knows when they would see each other again? Friday father starts to freak because he suddenly realises it would cause him to break his Sabbath. So booked a flight home that day and missed seeing son. The other son was furious stating, "He prefers his sermons to his son!!!" The mother, also a Sabbath-keeper stayed. As she told me, she believed that mercy over sacrifice took the precedence here.
This story prompts me to rethink accidents that have happened over 33 years of cutting firewood on our property. Once a stick poked a hole in the radiator of my wood hauler pickup; twice I have ripped tires on sharp edges of stumps; and in three separate accidents I have also done serious damage to the doors, the tailgate, or the topper on the truck. In each case, the problem forced me to suspend operations with my noisy chain saw.
I didn't keep records of what days these annoyances happened, but the moving account of this family's restored tranquility suggests a chilling possibility. My accidents could all have been on Saturdays, when they could easily have disturbed the concentration of neighboring families studying the Bible or of families who had sneaked into our woods to do so. There doesn't seem to be any rational explanation for a half-dozen such accidents over little more than three decades. They had to be miracles. Truly the sabbatarian god works in mysterious ways.
LOL!
Truly, anyone "lookin' for a miracle" is going to find it, whether it's really there or not.
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