click on picture to see it enlarged
Common sense says that Jordan will NOT tolerate a 100,000 Americans dwelling in their midst. Imagine the disease, the starvation, the power struggles, the rapes, murders, and sexual assaults! These things already happen in the COG as small groups. Imagine how the problems will be compounded when they all are camped out together.
Stretching out as far as the eye can see, this is the grim and depressing home of 160,000 refugees who have escaped the brutal Syrian civil war.
Incredibly, 6,000 people a day arrive at the sprawling Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, which has become the country's fifth largest city.
Despite the grim surroundings of the overcrowded 2.8 square-mile camp, its traumatised residents and the U.N officials who run it try to inject some humour.
ht: WIts main street, featuring many of its 3,000 shops, restaurants and food vendors, it known as the 'Champs Elysees' .
I'm sure that a typical ACOG member would visualize a camp more in keeping with the way in which Moses and Aaron, with the help of Moses' father-in-law Jethro, put together. Kind of a regathering of the tribes. Armstrongism always was more of a Moses-based religion than it was a Christ-based religion.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I gave up on the concept of a geographic place of safety long ago. If you contemplate really any of the ACOG ministers unrestrained by the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, I think you can see why such a place of safety would be exactly the opposite. Mainstream Christians do scripturally support the concept of the rapture just as effectively as Armstrongism supports their place of safety. It becomes a toss-up, with the rapture being much more attractive because Jesus is the gatekeeper, not one of the Armstrongite dictators. The rapture solves a lot of problems! Jesus' place of safety is truly a place of safety!
Bottom line is that God can protect you anywhere you happen to be. HWA created or utilized this role of human gatekeeper as a marketing tool for his church. The place of safety was the solution to all of the scary stuff that he dramatized on his programs and thru his literature, exclusively available through him. That part was never reality-based. It was all just part of the hype. Might as well file Petra in the Santa Clause file, only the Santa lie was much less damaging.
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Another reason Jordan would never let the COGs take refuge there. They are already taking in many Syrian refugees fleeing the tragic civil war.
ReplyDeleteI well remember seeing LCG's Richard Ames on a Tomorrow's World telecast mentioning Daniel 11:41:
He [the European Beast power] shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon."
Ames said this is referring to Jordan and then said this has implications. He did not say what those were, he kept going on other things. It was a very long time before I realized he was obliquely referring to the "Petra is the Place of Safety" doctrine.
It has to be said sometimes LCG does say that members should focus more on Christ protecting them, as opposed to any place of safety. But it is clear to me that they have not repudiated the doctrine at all, contrary to what Dave Pack loves to say to criticize them.
They de-emphasized it but never repudiated it.
and the grave is the safest place of all......
ReplyDeleteA minister would have to do some darned good miracles before I ever went over to Petra with him. Boy Howdy, would you ever want to be sure he was of God as opposed to just being a master of rhetoric!
ReplyDeleteAll that ACOG Petra garbage is such complete and total bollocks. As if.
ReplyDeleteThese scriptural references that not just COGs point to, but other christians besides, were written by ancient Jews for ancient Jews, and a few other converts besides. And where were these ancient folks living? North America? No, mostly in Judea. It is ridiculous to think that people in North America, in order to escape problems in the Middle East, would need to come TO the Middle East, and not stay safely in North America. If there were to be a problem in North America, where would North Americans flee? To the Middle East? Why? How about, I don't know, South America? I think a lot of christians, especially American christians, need to realize that the specifics of "their" bible was not written for them.
Or if you believe Art Braidic, angels will lift you up and carry you away to the Place of Safety and you don't have to worry about a thing... if you are accounted worthy.
ReplyDeletePetra seems like a place of threats.
Hey, Anonymous -- Antarctica!
ReplyDeleteWe should all remember the cautionary story of a man who foresaw World War II about to break out and move to his own personal place of safety: Guadalcanal.
http://www.audiodharma.org/
ReplyDeleteI check in to see the posts on this website as well as a few other sites with information about the WCOG and its splinters. As I have said before, I had a young relative who was raised in that church and went on to commit suicide in his late teens. I feel some compulsion to learn more about the "church" even though I know suicide is a result of multiple interconnected factors and not just one "church." However, I sometimes feel almost physically sick when I read about some of the craziness and abuse of the WCOG. I want to scream, "How coud people be so stupid?" ---- as to believe this stuff. As an antidote, I click on the link I put at the top and listen to the calm voices of some American Buddhist teachers who at least try to help people base their lives on what is real, what we can actually see, hear and perceive. It always helps so I thought I would share it. Again the link is: http://www.audiodharma.org/
now take this 160,00 and ramp them up to 3-4 million who left Egypt in the Exodus...uh huh.. lol
ReplyDeleteAnd then YHVH and Moses gets mad at them for asking for water which one really needs in a waste howling wilderness at least a few times a day to say the least.
DennisCDiehl said...
ReplyDeletenow take this 160,00 and ramp them up to 3-4 million who left Egypt in the Exodus...uh huh.. lol
And then YHVH and Moses gets mad at them for asking for water which one really needs in a waste howling wilderness at least a few times a day to say the least.
Yeah, but you see, this is not going to make a dent or crack in the brain of the believer. Shucks, Moses could go for 40 days and 40 nights without a drop of water (Ex. 34:28).
Moses, by golly, could speak to all the people at the same time too. You know, a group roughly 20 times as big as that refugee camp in the picture. Yes, and without even a PA system.
Isn't it amazing what people can believe if they want to hard enough?
Lol Corky....excellent points!
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, the deacons who learned parking lot detail at the F/T probably think they've got this crowd control stuff wired!
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