The last time I heard the Church of God telling members to put up charts to mark off days it was when the WCG was preparing to flee to Petra. We had some idiot minister come out to Columbus Ohio and proceed to illustrate for us how to make a chart and mark off the days till we were to flee. My mother had this in the kitchen cupboard and faithfully marked the days off one by one for a couple of years.
UCG has now moved into the charting business where they suggest that you make a chart to see how well you are working towards your salvation.
How may commandments did you keep today? How many did you break?
Did you keep all 613 of them?
Did you cuss today? If you did it is a black mark on your chart.
If you failed to be on your knees for one hour straight another black mark.
Did you raise your voice at your kids? Another black mark.
Did you go out to eat out on the Sabbath after church? Another black mark.............oops.........I forgot, UCG allows for its members ot make other people work on their behalf. That will earn UCG members a gold star!
Chart Your Way on the Road to Eternal Life
Sometimes it is not just our children who need help keeping track of how they are doing. We all are working on certain areas of our life—diet, exercise, prayer, Bible study. We should be keeping track of our accomplishments and also what areas we can develop ourselves in order to continue in our goal of building godly character and growing in the fruit of the spirit (Galatians:5:22-23
).
-------------Christians are evaluated during their time on this earth and in their behavior each day. God has given us a chart to measure ourselves against—the Ten Commandments (Exodus:20:1-17
; Deuteronomy:5:6-21
). We are to keep the Ten Commandments in their physical and spiritual intent. Remember, if a man even looked on a woman with wrong intent, it was considered a sin (Matthew:5:28). As we keep our mind from thinking evil things as well as stopping our hand from doing them, we are supposed to be thinking on whatever is pure and noble while using our bodies as vessels for good works (Philippians 4:8, 2 Timothy:2:21).
-------------If we want to chart our progress on our road to eternal life, we should be as the saints in Revelation:14:12. It reads, “Here is the patience of the saints: here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” The saints are those who check off their chart daily. Also, if we want to make sure we are on the path to eternal life, Jesus said, “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew:19:17).
Remember these hideous things?
God tells us to post the Commandments around our house and write them on the tablet of our heart. Visualize what it would look like when we walk in all of His ways. Visualize what it will be like in the Kingdom of God when the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord and the law of the Kingdom will be God’s Commandments (Ezekiel:44:24, Zechariah:14:16). When we picture it, it helps motivate us and focus better on achieving our goals.
As a Christian working towards building godly character and the reward of eternal life, choose goals that resonate with you and a more immediate reward to receive after your dedicated efforts. Possible rewards could be going to a park for your Bible study instead of just at home, going for a nice meal with a friend to share your experience of working towards your goal, getting yourself a pocket Bible with your name engraved on it, or buying a special Bible study pen to write in your Bible.Really???????
One reader took the author to task for writing such drivel:
Gal 2:16-21 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
She responds that "striving" to obey the law is a condition of salvation.
The law cannot save us, but our striving to obey it is a condition of our salvation.
I think marking off the days until we flee is a great idea. Buy one of those spiral 200 page graph paper notebooks from Walmart. Each square marks one day. Start checking off the days. (Hint: check off one day per day). By the time you get to the end of the notebook, Christ will be here.
ReplyDeleteIf not, buy another notebook.
Just don't put any dates on it, because no man knows the day or the hour.
Christians who use this system have been doing it for 2000 years, and there is still plenty of graph paper.
Works every time.
What do you expect from a cult that cannot discuss Jesus but know the law forward and backwards. They spit on everything Jesus did and said.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is there is no way to know even vaguely what kind of progress you need to make in order to qualify for salvation. How good is good enough? What measuring stick does God use for each individual? There is no way to know. At the end of your life can you know that you qualified for salvation if you believe you have to earn it?
ReplyDeleteI believe that if there is a life after this life that it is somehow something we automaticly progress to and we can't earn it neither can it be given to us by a gracious God.
Im going into business selling an "APP" for this to be used on an i Phone or Android device for UCG members.
ReplyDeleteUsing a notebook , pencil and paper etc for this is really primitive!
And the most important laws to keep are: tithing, holy days (because that's when offerings are collected), and sabbaths (your routine weekly indoctrination checkup). Other than that, we ministers aren't really affected, so we don't give a shit. That's right, I said shit. Yes, it is a black mark for you, but if I say it, it earns me a gold star, because I'm a minister and you're not.
ReplyDelete"They spit on everything Jesus did and said."
ReplyDeleteDon't sit in the front row either, or they'll inadvertently spit on you too, launched from a flapping jowl.
My chart: black mark, black mark, black mark, black mark, black mark, black mark, black mark, black mark,
ReplyDeletebbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
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"The truth is there is no way to know even vaguely what kind of progress you need to make in order to qualify for salvation. How good is good enough? What measuring stick does God use for each individual? There is no way to know. At the end of your life can you know that you qualified for salvation if you believe you have to earn it?"
ReplyDeleteBingo!
So you can make charts and graphs documenting what you assume to be "sin-free" periods, but all you've done is document your own biased opinions and wishful thinking about yourself, which is totally unrelated to what Yahweh's opinion would be, if there was a guarantee that Yahweh was the right god... Basically, you can plaster the problem over with gold stars kindergarten-style, and it doesn't fix the underlying issues your cognitive brain can't plumb your own subconsciousness, so you can't control yourself like you control a car or some other mechanistic thing, god is undefined, sin is undefined, mercy is undefined...the entire schema is undefined. And so there's no guarantee that any of it is going to make a scrap of difference to what may or may not happen to you after you die.
What's the difference between the Armstrongist Cults and the Cargo Cults?Not much. The differences are superficial.
Comment was made that "...UCG has now moved into the charting business where they suggest that you make a chart to see how well you are working towards your salvation..."
ReplyDeleteAnd someone in United assoc wrote: "...We should be keeping track of our accomplishments and also what areas we can develop ourselves in order to continue in our goal of building godly character and growing in the fruit of the spirit (Galatians:5:22-23)..."
Well, how would one grow in, let's say for example, the fruit of faith? How could SELF get a star for that growth?
I ask that because if God does not give and develop that faith by the power of His Spirit (world can't have that Spirit not: "Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive..." John 14:17)
God gives out faith by measure:
"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the MEASURE OF FAITH." Romans 12:3
God gives out faith by proportion:
"Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the PROPORTION OF FAITH;" Romans 12:6
One can't build up that faith. How does one USE God's Spirit to do that? It's impossible.
Besides, when one thinks they can earn salvation by anything that they do (no matter how many stars they think they acquired), then they deny both the Father and His Son. What then would be the sense of anybody having Christ our Passover sacrificed for us.............if we could just do it and earn our own salvation. It's absurd to think like that!
John
Christianity is different from all religions the world has known.
ReplyDeleteAll other religions, such as Armstrongism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and the rest of the gang are about what man must do to obtain the highest state.
Christianity is not about what man must do to obtain the big prize.
Christianity is all about what the Savior did so that the people can enjoy blissfully enlightened eternity.
Armstrongism rejects Jesus as complete Savior and instructs the people to try to be their own savior - it's a proven path of destruction in which black marks override merit badges.
So, ha! The ultimate gold star goes to me . . . . and anyone else who wants a Savior who does it all for them!