Bob Thiel, the non-ordained self-appointed false prophet has been railing for several weeks about his god using tornadoes to punish sinners with.
Last week LCG announced that Rod King has an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Is Bob Thiel going to start railing that human sickness is a tool of God to punish sinners? That is in essence what Bob is saying when he compares tornadoes to sin.
Armstrongism has always looked at physical sin/illnses to be a result of spiritual sin. Is that the malarkey that Bob Thiel still promotes? Will Bob Thiel post a letter to the membership stating such thing?
25 comments:
Bob has a developmentally disabled son.
He cannot go to far in pressing the point that God uses sickness and disease as a curse, or else he will have to admit that God is cursing the Thiel family, in which case he will then have to ask WHY Thiel's family is so displeasing to God.
Prostate cancer, so preventable, looks like these morons are still avoiding/minimizing doctors
I think some of them believe you can cure cancer with baking soda or an alkaline body or vitamin D.
On a related note PCG has released an article by Ron Fraser, What Mental Illness is Not, condemning mental health medication as a money making fraud of Germanic origin. Yes. It really is that crazy.
He claims that mental illness is made up by doctors and psychologists to make money. (Is he projecting?)
The article is saturated with derogatory terms demonizing mental health scientists as religiously fanatical, money making con-artists.
I shudder to imagine how this will harm people within PCG. It is disgusting.
Odd that people like Bob Thiel believe God is the direct cause of all the disasters we see today. How about he consider the idea God has allowed Satan limited reign over this world, and so Satan is the direct cause of the disasters? That would make far more sense according the scriptures. Sure God could stop Satan, and in fact He will one day. For now we just have to suffer the consequences for turning our backs to God ever since Adam and Eve. Those who understand and repent will be saved. That's what the Gospel is all about. Bob on the other hand wants us to follow him and his false teachings. No thanks.
Jesus was asked by his disciples, "Who sinned, this blind man or his parents." Jesus said, "neither." Sickness isn't a tool used by God to punish. We live in a fallen world and sickness and disasters are a part of it. Thiel apparently is as clueless as the so-called friends of Job.
Jesus was asked by his disciples, "Who sinned, this blind man or his parents." Jesus said, "neither." Sickness isn't a tool used by God to punish. We live in a fallen world and sickness and disasters are a part of it. Thiel apparently is as clueless as the so-called friends of Job.
The actual miracle of Jesus with the blind man and who sinned is described as :
John 9
New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind
9 As he went along, he saw a man BLIND FROM BIRTH. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus,
Blind from birth seems a problem as the question comes up theologically "just when did this man sin if he was blinded by the sin from birth"? This leads to some using this as a leftover scripture on reincarnation issues in the last life leading to sins to be paid for in this one. A man blind from birth could only have sinned before that birth that left him blind as the result of some sin previoulsy.
I'd love to ask this question in a COG bible study and see what the answer would be. lol
ok people we have human physical bodies, not spiritual bodies. We only have a limited lifespan in these bodies like 70+ years, more if you are lucky. Sure some people get sick because of their lifestyle, but eventually we all get sick and die. It is what humans do. Plus some people are born with health problems, sometimes just caused by a mismatch in genetic material. The human body is designed to eliminate a lot of mutated DNA, but eventually this process breaks down and we get cancer and other problems of old age, then we die. If you want a scripture, there is a proverb or Psalm somewhere that describes the aging process. Thankfully medical science has helped us eliminate some of these problems.... for a while.
My daughter has a problem with dlinical depression. It can get so bad it completely incapacitates her if she doesn't take the medication she's been prescribed. It's totally stupid to claim sin had anything to do with it. It's genetic and has a lot to do with my choice of a mate way back in 1960.
Yes, a woman ate a piece of magical fruit from a magical tree in a magical garden in Mesopotamia and the whole planet became a "fallen world". Unlike the planet Mars, which is a real lively planet where nobody gets sick or dies.
If I were asked to identify the single most damaging aspect of Armstrongism, it would be that they set this image of an angry, judgmental God, who was just waiting to swoop down on all of us and punish at a whim.
This was conveyed verbally via the doctrines, through the HWA interpretation of prophecy, via parent-child relationships as prescribed by GTA's childrearing booklet, by the interaction between the ministry and members, and numerous other subliminal ways.
God got a bad rap from Armstrongism, so much so that almost reflexively, when you hear someone speak as has Bob Thiel, even if you were not familiar with his name, you'd just "know" that he had once been part of Armstrongism.
There's a better way, folks! Other Christians are moved by Jesus' interaction with Nicodemas, culminating in the loving words of John 3:16. When I came back to belief in God, one of the things which made me love Him more than anything else was the loving way in which He treated me and taught me while I was a prodigal. If ever there was justification for disease or punishment, I surely provided plenty of it. Preachers who dwell on punishment really don't even know God.
BB
Byker Bob said, "If I were asked to identify the single most damaging aspect of Armstrongism, it would be that they set this image of an angry, judgmental God, who was just waiting to swoop down on all of us and punish at a whim."
MY COMMENT - Agreed! So true.
Richard
RCG "grew in numeric attendance by a greater amount" in May than UCG in 12 months. Is amount a percentage or a number?
(Relevant: http://xkcd.com/1102/)
The whole, "God is cursing" thingy smacks of ignorant superstition.
It's been used by many religions throughout history to control and manipulate people.
The latest example I noticed was asshole preacher Creflo Dollar employing it on Daystar Christian TV, although in the past, I've noticed other asshole Daystar preachers using it, too.
"The gods are pissed" has been superstitiously used by every "pagan" religion since homonids hunted wooly mammoths. Whenever shit goes south, start sacrificing anything and everything, because "the gods are pissed." And when I say "pagan" I'm not necessarily excluding christianity.
Christianity pagan? Now I heard everything. I suppose next we will see posted here that Christianity is atheistic. Is this site about being critical about the COGs, of which there is much, or it about spreading BS?
Anonymous said...
Christianity pagan? Now I heard everything
What planet do you live on? Between it's origins in Sun worship and Jesus being just another rendition of the dying/rising pagan gods before him, of course it is just as wracked with paganism as paganism. It is christianized paganism taking anything from the religions of the past to weave old ideas woven in new ways.
Holydays and Holidays originate in solar worship or fertility rights symbolized by agricultural truths. "God" loved Abel's meat offering and hated Cain's veggie burgers because patriarchy, meat sacrifice, temples and male priests were in and seeds, rain and veggies of the fertility and goddess worship in the surrounding population were out along with matriarchy.
It's why women in Genesis 4 end up only having babies painfully and saying yes sir to men. They lost and get the blame now instead of the respect and worship.
The story of Jesus turning water into wine is just a redo of Dionysis, the god of wine, turning water into wine (rain into grapes into wine) No other gospel recalls this as Jesus first miracle as John does. It's very pagan story.
It's very clear that much of the Bible has it's origins in paganism.
Ah, are we discarding the concept of "satan's counterfeits" within paganism? That would be one way to open the door to the theory that the Bible is based on paganism.
BB
it is very sad that almost all the stories in the Bible included Jesus life and death and resurrection are a duplication of some previous mythological and astrological pagan story. Sort of destroys any possibility of faith unless I want to worship Horus too. So I wonder did these things really happen way before all the mythical pagan accounts. I think the Bible probably came along last with these stories.
"Ah, are we discarding the concept of "satan's counterfeits" within paganism? That would be one way to open the door to the theory that the Bible is based on paganism."
I don't see how one can entertain the notion of a literal satan if one subscribes to the the theory that the bible is a Hebraic modification of previous pagan religions and myths.
If you believe that satan was busy stealing god's thunder by beating him to the punch with all sorts of prefiguring counterfeits to discredit god's plan, I suppose it makes also sense that the dinosaurs were how satan distorted and corrupted god's perfect creation, such that he had no choice and had to throw it away and start all over again. But then god and satan had a big fight, and everything got all messed up anyway. Dammit satan, look what you made me do!
Jesus has to return soon, before we end up as dinosaur-like creatures with tiny, useless arms and huge ferocious teeth.
"satan's counterfeits"
Lol, here's what happened...
Satan knew about God's Mighty Plan cuz God told him about it when Satan was still a nice guy.
Later, after Satan became naughty, he went and put all kinds of similar stories in places before the Hebrews could have the REAL stories happen.
So, Satan made it look as if the Hebrews had adopted their (uncannily similar) stories from the cultures they'd come in contact with. In short, Satan has tried to DISCREDIT the veracity of the Bible using his usual trickiness.
(Sort of how Satan "planted" fossils to make the theory of evolution seem correct.)
But Satan has not tricked me!
I KNOW that the Bible is The Word of God, and that any people who say otherwise are influenced by Satan the DEVIL.
Ooooh....that nasty Satan, he's so bad and tricky, but thankfully I'm infused with the Holy Spirit so he can't trick me!
If you don't believe that God or Satan exist, and don't believe that the Bible is the Word of God, sure, then why not? From that vantage point, you can do anything you wish with the Bible, disregard it, or keep it around for spare toilet tissue in case of a depression.
But, if the Bible is what it says it is, then Satan knew or knows the innards of the whole God thingie, and how to combat it. And, yes, advance counterfeits could be part of it. Mythology and paganism have to have come from somewhere, and they do appear in some cases to predate the Bible.
The problem is, in their naive enthusiasm, some, like the young earthers, have gone too far. It's all too easy to single them out as ridiculous examples, treat them for purposes of discussion as if they are the norm, and divert serious discussion or logical theories.
BB
Mythology and paganism did come from "somewhere" ... and it isn't from Satan.
The answer is inside ourselves, and not hard to find.
(No hokey "Holy Spirit" required!)
The Bible is chock full of mythology.
Have you enjoyed the works of Joseph Campbell?
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