Lets Play Volleyball
Nothing wrong with playing volleyball, but playing volleyball at Christmas time is an event with hidden and ulterior motives, invented by certain "heads" of Worldwide Church of God splinter groups and with a hidden agenda.
Cult leaders of WCG splinter groups invented "family" time at Christmas time, for no other reason than to keep their members away from being attracted to the celebration of Christmas with family.
The CULT Worldwide Church of God splinter groups are notorious for deception, and the naive and gullible who bow to these groups, are not thinking human beings, they are all seduced by man-made religious ideas.
Indeed playing volleyball is a fun engagement, but no one but the most simple minded of human beings are blinded by this "family" time event, designed to keep members away from Christmas.
The primary reason is because those who rule these people want to keep $CASH flowing into
their pocket books and not spent on gifts at Christmas time for children, so they make the claim that
Christmas is pagan and anti-God. Nonsense!
So, volleyball player, have you gone to the homes of the leaders of these Worldwide Church of God splinter groups and seen how they live in splendor and luxury at your expense? Probably not! Supposedly they speak for God and all the while they live in mansions, while they convince the naive that their "tithes" are being used to "preach the Gospel to the world."
Volleyball at Christmas is one of the most outrageous frauds ever invented by religious frauds, who pretend that Christmas is "evil." Christmas is not evil, it is simply a harmless custom, much like
camping, hiking, mountain climbing, surfing, swimming or home schooling. What is really EVIL, is destroying families by playing volleyball at Christmas time, when families are RIPPED APART by Worldwide Church of God religious crap. Think hard my friend, because you and your children are being USED and ABUSED by religious freaks who invented this bull.
Van Robison
Cult leaders of WCG splinter groups invented "family" time at Christmas time, for no other reason than to keep their members away from being attracted to the celebration of Christmas with family.
ReplyDeleteHahahaha!...
Just like PCg and their annual Pine Car Derby Races around that time...(that Brian Davis was HELL BENT to win, especially HELL BENT TO BEAT >ME<)...and the "Silent Auction" to raise money for the PCg that only the elite at >Headquarters< profited from.
Meanwhile...back at everyone's outside of >Headquarters< funny-farm...and after THAT great Woopie-Ti-Yo event was over with, and the privileged elite went home to their wonderful mansions in the sky at PCg >Headquarters< and got together with THEIR families and celebrated the season(but of course they were not celebrating anything pertaining to Christmas...yea, right), and the peasants shuffled back to their shacks, barely eking out an existence, void of family and friends and >MONEY< BECAUSE THEY GAVE IT ALL TO >HEADQUARTERS< SO <THEY COULD "CELEBRATE THE SEASON"
i notice u people are very biased in what religions you proclaim are evil: you are very critical of the cogs and the evil they have done but you hold your nose to the evil that the inventors of christmas and easter have done, evils that include child molestation and rampant greed.
ReplyDeletethis is further proof that you are more interested in finding fault with the cogs than you are in finding fault with the evils of they who claim to be christian. you people lack integrity.
What an incredibly stupid comment! I've seen more children molested in Armstrongism than I ever have in the neighboring churches in my area. I seen more greed in my life time from Herbert Armstrong and various evangelists than I have in my neighbors or local business men who are involved in the co me its and give back. When has a minister in a COG ever done that??????????
ReplyDeleteanon 10:43pm: first off you use insults to get your point across and that is childish; secondly, there is plenty of evidence that the inventors of christmas have engaged in 100's of years worth of evil doing (everything from molestation to torture) yet you say nothing; yet in your criticism of cogs you have offered no more evidence than a personal decree as if your word is all that counts; and even if you offer any "evidence", you cannot prove such abuse to be common occurrence and systematic.
DeleteHow can xmas and easter be greedy or molest children? I thought only people could do that.
ReplyDeleteI think blogs need a focus, just like books, photographs, college courses, etc. The focus of this blog is the evils of Herbert Armstrong and his emulators, and follies of those who worship them. If that's a cause for a lack of integrity, then there's no such thing as integrity.
And since when was it necessary to be an equal-opportunity critic? If Gene Siskel rates one movie, is he then under the gun to weigh in on every movie ever made? One can point out that one particular pot happens to be an awful lot blacker than most people seem to notice without weighing in on the color of every other kettle and pan in existence. So that's a fallacy.
Your comment makes no sense.
anon 4:30am what makes no sense is how you twisted what i said; where did i say that christmas was greedy and molests children? i suspect you typically misread written words like the bible or a legal document like a mortgage or lease? therein is the problem isnt it?
DeleteThe main passage that the Church of God uses to condemn Christmas trees is Jer 10. Read it closely and you see that it was an IDOL, something that was worshipped. Do you know of any Christian who worships their Christmas tree? Many Christmas traditions are pagan in origin. But so are most of the Old Testament rituals given to the Israelites. Priests, temples, sacrifices, circumcision, etc. They were new to the Israelites. They were common practices among the pagans. What God did was He attached new meaning to these pagan activities and symbols.
ReplyDeleteI rarely comment on the assinine posts on this blog site. I come here to gather a bit of news once in a while. But this post is laughable.
ReplyDeleteThe Winter Family Weekends the COGs have put very little (read "no") money into the coffers of the COGs. The money is spent on hotels, food, gas, and registration fees to pay for the facilities.
You could just as easily rail against the commercialism of Christmas and Easter and the merchants who struggle to convince innocent people to take out loans to buy the latest toys and trinkets for their children, their extended families, their co-workers, their mailman, etc., etc.
But then that wouldn't progress your agenda to bash the COGs for perceived injustices done 30 years ago, now would it?
If you were to actually read the post, Van isn't saying that WFW is an event that the COGs profit from directly. But it is surely an event designed to celebrate xmas without "celebrating" it. I mean, have you noticed "Christmas at the Galt House"? Not exactly the place to go to get away from xmas!
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am not sure if it really stops people from keeping xmas with their extended families, and "wasting" money on xmas gifts that could be going in the offering envelope or not. You certainly could do that if you wanted to and I am sure a few people do. But most Armstrongists are either old-timers, or children of old-timers who think all that nonsense is sacred and that "god" is really judging them by every word of HWA.
It sure seems like a waste of money (not to mention time off work) celebrating xmas with another FOT called WFW. I never did during my days in UCG. I couldn't afford it. Besides, it seemed like an event for ministers and HQ brown-nosers to me. Meh.
cliche rebuttal responses used by they who are in the wrong: "you are stupid" "you are making no sense" "you are a fool", "you are ignorant".
ReplyDeleteRather than argue the point (frankly because you cannot), you resort to insults and personal attacks, which in the context of civil discourse amount to no more than a dog's barking and growling.
Rather than argue the point you resort to humiliation in an attempt to discredit someone that you disagree with. That is the hallmark of they what have no legitimate pov but are only interested in interference.
We do NOT put up an Xmas tree each year nor do we get involved with all the "holiday spirit" -- it's just too commercialized.
ReplyDeleteNo, we just put that brazen serpent up on a pole in front of the fireplace and look at it, hoping for healing.
After the holidays, we're no better off, but then, for the most part, we aren't that much worse off....
What I really want for Christmas this year is Urim and the Thummim.
ReplyDeleteCould somebody help me with that?
First, this blog doesn't concern itself with critiquing the vast panorama of toxic cults extant around the world. If there is hypocrisy or harm in another cult, or in mainstream Christianity, normally we would not be devoting huge amounts of time or attention to that. Why not? Not because those things are not bad, it is rather because we are focussed on the particular toxic cult which impacted our own lives, and in publically processing that, with the hopes that our first person experience might prevent Armstrong cults from having a similar effect in the lives of others in the future. If Hare Krishna members and their children were forced to go without, to chant until hoarse, and to undergo purification rites involving cow dung, basically that was not our specific experience or problem, so we leave that to others to expose or discuss. If Scientology auditors were too intrusive, or it cost poor people way too much money to get clear and OT, it is up to the people who left that group to discuss such problems. Now, if there are common problematic areas which Armstrongism shared with other groups, such as the child molestation in the RCC, or continued failure of prophecy in the SDA church, either the blog owner or a regular poster is sure to comment upon that.
ReplyDeleteThere are two basic types of critics we encounter. One type is totally oblivious to and unfamiliar with Armstrongism, and, after an accidental encounter, comments about us wasting our time or being obsessed. The other type is the current Amstrong true believer who realizes how effective we really are in preventing new people from making the mistake of entering the splinter cults, and also in prompting some of the splinter members to reconsider their positions and thinking, and to leave the groups. We are normally grateful to both types, because they provide us with the opportunity to reiterate our mission statement.
Having said all of that, I was not around the splinters when this winter weekend or winter volleyball was instituted. As WCG members during the supposed classic pre-1975 old school era, we made a fetish of hiding during Halloween, of vigorously working on Sunday, and of abstaining from any sort of gathering or festivities during the Christmas season. Although Hannukah was a legitimate national holiday for the Jews, celebrating the miraculous lasting of non-contaminated lighting oil for usage in the holy rituals during the time of the Maccabees, we did not embrace it because it often overlapped the Christmas season, and it was thought that we would give "the world" a wrong impression. This, in spite of the fact that
Hannukah predates Christmas, and that Jesus is actually recorded as taking part in this festival in the New Testament.
Apparently, in Armstrongism, it is wrong to celebrate one of God's miracles which was documented in the Septuagint, the Bible for Jesus' time, but later considered part of the lore of the Catholic Bible (Apocrypha), because it might have been one of Satan's "conspiracies" to get even the Jews celebrating something during the "pagan" Christmas season, but it is now OK to have Winter family volleyball weekends in facilities which put on huge Christmas displays.
By the way, a group once notorious for beating its children in the name of Jesus, and not taking their kids to the doctor's when treatment was sorely needed does deserve to be complimented for now doing something that promotes family values and strengthens a sense of community, but one wonders, considering past history, why they would find it so easy to reverse one of HWA's staunch iconic precepts, but fail to correct such a glaring, laughable error such as British Israelism.
BB
Thanks for the rebuttal 8:05.
ReplyDeleteSince you didn't rebut the "integrity" thing, therefore I suppose we're in agreement in the affirmative about that. And ditto about the "equal-opportunity criticism" thing. So that's 2/3 of my previous comment settled in the affirmative.
BTW, I don't give two hoots about xmas or easter. I just don't think they're any more "evil" than thanksgiving or the 4th of July, or any more "pagan" than the ancient Israelites' harvest festivals (which are most probably "pagan" festivals of the ancient Canaanites since archaeology proves the exodus didn't happen).
And the reason for my assumption that the perpetrators must be xmas and easter themselves, is because xmas and easter are 1000's of years old, so therefore, the mythical "evil inventors of xmas and easter" must be long dead by now, since people don't live to be 1000's of years old. Or perhaps you disagree? And I figured you didn't think these mythical "evil inventors of xmas and easter" were the mythical "satan and his demons" cuz the bible myths don't say they molest children.
So then who, pray tell, are these mythical "evil inventors of xmas and easter"? Do these mythical "evil inventors of xmas and easter" have names? What are their lifespans? 1000's of years? And what did they do that was so evil? Do you have any evidence that they were "greedy" or "molested children"? Do tell.
Seriously, the two charges you lay against these mythical, "inventors of xmas and easter" with unnatural long life, is that they were "greedy" and "molested children"? Because this sounds curiously similar to the charges laid against the evil "inventor" of something else I could think of: Armstrongism. A Freudian slip perhaps?
Perhaps these mythical "evil inventors of xmas and easter" have grown nieces or grandchildren too, such as Deborah Armstrong or Larry Gott who have both testified that it was a known "secret" within their family that Herbert NOT "a wonderful, caring, loving, kind, gentle, Christian kind of man" and that he was, indeed a child molester?
Please, let us not deal in criticisms against mythical figures. If you cannot identify either these mythical persons or those who bear witness against them, then you have offered no more evidence than a personal decree as if your word is all that counts.
As if xmas and easter were invented by a couple of dudes sitting on the couch getting high one day. I'm sure it's a huge misunderstanding of the origins of xmas and easter to assume they had definite "inventors."
Still not making sense. Try again?
amazing: you imply that armstongism has historically proven more harmful than the institution that gave the world christ mass, easter, child molestation, nazi sympathy, the spanish inquisition, the crusades, etc., etc., etc.?
DeleteYou let your hate of armstrongism trump even the mere acknowledgement of the fact that the inventers of christmass are at least just as guilty of what you allege armstrong is guilty of?
so YOUR allegations, unfounded, unproven and undocumented, trump the written evidence of 100's of years of torture, molestation, murder and warmongering on the part of the inventors of christ mass (what was indeed an invention because it certainly was not a Command)?
Deleteapparently it is the name armstrong that you hate and not the evil goings on.
Well, Byker Bob, the ACoGs could have a British Israelism festival.
ReplyDeleteIt would, of course, coincide with the Christmas / New Year holiday season, but that, of course, would be just coincidental.
Yes friends, come celebrate the British Israelism festival this season for fun, food, games, socials, picnics and sports. It will be a very fun time.
Just remember though, you must really BELIEVE in British Israelism with your whole being to gain the most from the festival.
Gift exchange will be at 5:00 P.M.
It's clear that the core problem is that the Feast of Tabernacles in not enough to keep the membership happy and they need more to help them be satisfied to keep the ACoG at the center of their lives.
ReplyDeleteEven at the Feasts for the smaller sites, things like the singles skip town in favor of other Feast sites that have more appeal, more activities and more singles, even if the site might be in an ACoG other than their own.
This sort of situation spells trouble ahead.
Anonymous, the stuff you are trying to fan the flames of mostly has not happened in our own modern times. Not only that, but many Sunday-keeping Christians from Paul's gentile churches are documented through the writings of the antinicene fathers as having been martyrred right along side of the Jewish, sabbath keeping Christians. This took place right up until the time of Constantine. And, of course, it happened again a thousand or more years later in Europe, when many Christians were martyrred for their faith, as the Reformation took off.
ReplyDeleteNobody is addressing your arguments because you are simply restating the puerile sort of things we learned to spout as followers of HWA. Dig deeper, my friend. Do some due diligence and research of your own! Give us something we can respect if you would like to debate! We all know that the Spanish Inquisition happened at the hands of the RCC, but, who is responsible for the death of Janet DeGenarro in our own contemporary times?
BB
"amazing: you imply that armstongism has historically proven more harmful than the institution that gave the world christ mass, easter, child molestation, nazi sympathy, the spanish inquisition, the crusades, etc., etc., etc.? You let your hate of armstrongism trump even the mere acknowledgement of the fact that the inventers of christmass are at least just as guilty of what you allege armstrong is guilty of? ... so YOUR allegations, unfounded, unproven and undocumented, trump the written evidence of 100's of years of torture, molestation, murder and warmongering on the part of the inventors of christ mass (what was indeed an invention because it certainly was not a Command)? apparently it is the name armstrong that you hate and not the evil goings on."
ReplyDeleteSo then, can we consider it settled that these you cannot identify either these supposed "inventors," or those who bear witness against them, and therefore that you acknowledge that you just made up them up? Ditto for the charges against these fictitious characters.
I imply no such things because:
A) Straw man-false equivalency. "Xmas and easter" ≠ "christianity." (When did I ever say anything about christianity?)
B) The "institutions" that gave us "xmas and easter" predate christianity. Hence, if "xmas and easter" were "invented" by a couple of dudes one afternoon smoking pot, they weren't "christians," because there was no such thing as christianity yet. ERGO, christianity did not "give the world" (invent) "xmas and easter." You should have learned enough to realize this from your COG indoctrination.
C) Once again, celebrations like "xmas and easter" were NOT "invented" by a couple of dudes one afternoon smoking pot! They were "invented" over thousands of years by millions of people.
D) If I WERE to say something about christianity vs Armstrongism, then I would have to say you're right about nazi sympathy, the spanish inquisition, and the crusades. And although christianity did not give the world child molestation either, it has indeed facilitated quite a bit of it! And even though there were no "inventors of xmas and easter" you are right that many "christian" leaders down through the ages have been or are "at least just as guilty of what you allege armstrong is guilty of"!
QUESTION: Is Armstrongism a "christian" sect or is it not? ANSWER: YES! ERGO, Herbert Armstrong was PAR FOR THE COURSE! What else should we expect from a sect of this pernicious religion that, at least since the Edict of Thessalonica has facilitated a litany of biblically-based atrocities? Why shouldn't I expect the leader of my (former) church to conform to the "christian" norm too? So neither of us should be too surprised that Herbert Armstrong was similarly atrocious! This is tangential to the point I was trying to make, but I am more than happy to make it.
E) "Xmas and easter" don't have anything to do with any of this. No more so than Thanksgiving or the 4th of July! These problems you're talking about are not caused by "xmas and easter," nor are they caused by any mythical, fictitious "inventors of xmas and easter." They're caused by the fact that there are bad people everywhere and the bible often aids and abets them, i.e. inquisitions and crusades.
PROTIP: if you think you've got a valid point to make, don't you think you SHOULDN'T have to concoct a series of untruths in order to make it? That right there should be a red flag for ya, before you press the publish button...
well despite the elaborate arguments it is most certain that not only can any reference to christ mass be found in the Commands of God but they whom indulge in that command of men leave behind a snail's trail of multiple evils from complicity to genocide to endorsement of enslaving another human being, and these things they do because the Love of Christ is absent from them.
ReplyDeleteof course i meant no reference to chris mass can be found in the Commands of God
ReplyDeleteno one is blaming christ mass or easter for anything; but they who invent such holidays in the name of Christ most certainly are on record as committing the most evil acts against their fellow man.
ReplyDeletebb, where is the evidence of sunday keeping christians prior to the time of constantine?
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:50, I already told you----the writings of the Antenicene Fathers, but will elaborate.
ReplyDeleteThere was an unbroken chain of faithful understudies and teachers, basically the disciples of the original disciples, and in turn, their disciples. Collectively, they were called the early church fathers, or Antenicene (meaning before Nicean Council) Fathers. Had Herbert W. Armstrong read their works, there would have been no reason for him to invent a conspiracy theory based on Simon Magus to explain the origins of the Catholic Church, because these writers and historians, preservationists if you will, wrote much on the history of the early church. HWA told us that there was a lost century in church history, when in fact there was no lost century.
There is a writer who has been active on the blogs and forums over the years, Bill Hohman, who has written extensively on this topic. I believe that Bill still contributes occasionally to the As Bereans Did blog, and his dissertation may be available there. Prior to Bill, we had Jerod Olar, a scholar also well-versed on this particular period in history.
Believe me when I tell you that you cannot trust any of the research or histories promoted by HWA, WCG, or the ACOGs. Two of their primary sources, Hislop and Velikovski have been totally debunked, discredited, and are considered to be of ill repute by the majority of authentic historians and scholars today. Also, the "True History of the True Church" is a total farce, based on very shoddy research and giant leaps to unwarrented conclusions. HWA brands the Antenicene Fathers as "Catholic", yet they wrote against Simon Magus and his heresies, and collected and destroyed all of his original writings.
The problem is, back in the day, who had the time or resources to check up on all of the lies we were carefully and authoritatively fed in support of WCG? "God's Apostle" said it, and that supposedly settled it. Sometimes, it requires years of legitimate research to catch up with false statements that people make. Most of the stuff which was said was of limited interest, anyway, oddball things which were only believed by the followers of Herbert W. Armstrong. Some of it was semi-original, some came in from the Adventist movement, and some came from G.G Rupert. It was only when honest researchers began leaving WCG, and knew where to look to go deeper, beyond the cherry picked quotes the church always cited that we began to have access to real information.
If you have never done so, I would recommend reading for yourself the complete works of Josephus, and the writings of as many of the Antenicene Fathers as you can find. I did this several years ago, and it was quite an eye opening experience.
BB
I am rather fond of today's "Christian" holidays that have pagan roots.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
Because they are a way that families to get together- share one another's relatedness and personal journeys.
The "greed" mentioned?
I blame that on salesmen, who have been using sleazy ways to exploit people and events for millennia, trying to be above others.
Should we stop having family events because of the salesmen trying to profit off of them?
Of course not! Family members are capable of loving others for who they are, without some sleazy salesmen's shit intruding.
Family is important, and can give us a connectedness with the larger world.
Getting together with family can be a wonderful thing, and the wiser among us can appreciate our inter-relatedness, and also accept the limitations within those relationships.
(Heck, even though some of those family relationships aren't the way we'd like them to be.)
"well despite the elaborate arguments it is most certain that not only can any reference to christ mass be found in the Commands of God but they whom indulge in that command of men leave behind a snail's trail of multiple evils from complicity to genocide to endorsement of enslaving another human being, and these things they do because the Love of Christ is absent from them. of course i meant no reference to chris mass can be found in the Commands of God[.] no one is blaming christ mass or easter for anything; but they who invent such holidays in the name of Christ most certainly are on record as committing the most evil acts against their fellow man."
ReplyDeleteOnce again, WHO ARE THESE "INVENTORS" of "such holidays"??? WHAT ARE THEIR NAMES??? WHERE ARE THESE "RECORDS" that detail these "most evil acts against their fellow man"???
Please PROVIDE LINKS to the INTERNET RESOURCES that DOCUMENT these "most evil acts." If you cannot do so, then you are merely concocting a series of untruths for the purpose of justifying in your own mind a false belief which was handed to you as a "sacred truth."
There's more than one "god" out there and more than one "christ" and more than one "savior" and more than one "messiah." Each one of these has his or her own "commands," i.e. Allah.
You CLAIM TO KNOW "it is most certain" that "they whom indulge in that command of men [xmas and easter] leave behind a snail's trail of multiple evils from complicity to genocide to endorsement of enslaving another human being."
AND YET, the COMMANDS OF YOUR gOD sanction slavery and genocide!!! A-maz-ing!
Ex 21:20-21 When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.
Also see Ex 21:2-6, 7-11; Lev 25:44-46; Luke 12:47-48; Eph 6:5; 1 Tm 6:1-2. According to 1 Cor 10:4, Jesus is the "god" of the OT, and even in the NT he condones the punishment of slaves, even when they didn't know they were doing anything wrong.
1 Sm 15:2-3 Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Also see Deut 2:34, 3:6, 7:2, 7:16, 13:15, 20:16-17; Joshua 6:21, 10:40.
Compare with the Islamic Hadith Sahih Muslim, 41:6985
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (the Boxthorn tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.
If Allah isn't the true god, then neither is the god of the bible, I'm afraid.
You CLAIM that those who "indulge in [xmas and easter] leave behind a snail's trail of multiple evils from complicity to genocide to endorsement of enslaving another human being" EVEN WHILE YOUR gOD commands genocide and endorses slavery! Staggering!
Then you imply that YOU'RE the only ones with "the Love of Christ"??? Blecchh! This is just so much fallacious reasoning stacked upon fallacious reasoning heaped on top of more fallacious reasoning, amounting to nothing.
Please PROVIDE LINKS to the INTERNET RESOURCES that DOCUMENT how you KNOW that people who "indulge in [xmas and easter]" do these "most evil acts" at rates that are different from those who do not, such as fundy Armstrongites or Muslims.
Prove it.
Anon @ December 8, 2014 at 12:06 PM,
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to think you won't have a very merry Christmas.
People like you make Baby Jesus and Santa sad!
Maybe you could play some volleyball to feel better?
If you do, PLEASE don't spike the ball on Rudolph's glowing nose or Baby Jesus' fontanels.
Are you kiddin? Nothing fills me with holiday cheer like holding a "troo b'leever's" feet to the fire. LOL
ReplyDeleteOh my, the arrogance of such false certainty. I'm only a grinch to the grinches who vomit up a litany of trite and shallow Armstrongist catchphrases like how xmas is the work of "the devil" and identify it as being responsible for all manner of evils--which are in fact easily justifiable in the pages of the bible they hold so dear--oh my!
Go to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas to read up on the origins of Christmas; one thing you will not find in the article is where the holiday was Commanded by the bible.
ReplyDeleteWho ever said either xmas or easter were ever commanded by the bible?
ReplyDeleteGo to http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/B006QS02F8 to read up on the origins of the various and sundry texts that did and did not wind up being canonized by the early catholic (gasp!) church fathers and why they couldn't have been written by the people the early church fathers told us they were (let alone inspired by any deity whatsoever).
It's kind of sad that so many people, christians and jews alike, waste so much of their lives jumping so carefully through so many ritualistic hoops, tithing on their mint, anise, and cumin, washing their cups, and pots, and brazen vessels (and abstaining from so many other rituals just as carefully) all in order to appease a purely theoretical, supposedly omni-everything being, who it is illogical to expect exists, and therefore isn't watching (or inspiring incoherent anthologies).
Ecclesiastes 1:2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
where did the concept and knowledge of Jesus first appear? In the Bible; so what is the logic in forming extra biblical ways to Honor Him when the Bible is clear about not only what His Will is, but also about the wrongheadedness of following the commandments of men instead of God's own Commandments, which by the way are only found in that same Bible...
DeleteFarting was not commanded in the Bible either, and yet you'd probably explode (or suffer extreme gastrointestinal discomfort) if you didn't fart.
ReplyDeletethe fact is the sanctioning and keeping extra biblical holidays are hallmarks of they who historically and to this day are guilty of genocide, child molestation, torture, murder, complicity in warfare, hatred of the poor and minorities, anti semitism, you name it,
ReplyDeleteyet you people are afraid to be critical of these types and the evil that they have done to millions but instead you choose to pile on to a pathetic little church which makes claim to following the Bible to the letter?
"the fact is the sanctioning and keeping extra biblical holidays are hallmarks of they who historically and to this day are guilty of genocide, child molestation, torture, murder, complicity in warfare, hatred of the poor and minorities, anti semitism, you name it, yet you people are afraid to be critical of these types and the evil that they have done to millions but instead you choose to pile on to a pathetic little church which makes claim to following the Bible to the letter? where did the concept and knowledge of Jesus first appear? In the Bible; so what is the logic in forming extra biblical ways to Honor Him when the Bible is clear about not only what His Will is, but also about the wrongheadedness of following the commandments of men instead of God's own Commandments, which by the way are only found in that same Bible..."
ReplyDeleteFinal post.
I asked you to prove it. You tacitly declined. Why? Because you don't know where to start. You've never tried to prove these assertions before, and if you ever did try, you would discover that these assertions cannot be proven true. Authority figures told you these things were "true" and you accepted it without question. And to this day, you still hold these falsehoods as being above reproach or question.
So all you did was return to the same tone-deaf assertions as you began with.
We all know that these assertions are part of the fabric of lies that form the ideology of Armstrongism. This discussion is a case study into what is wrong with that ideology.
It is illogical an nonsensical to claim that those who practice xmas and easter perpetrate evils at any greater rate than those who practice other rituals, or no rituals at all. Unless of course, you propose that some rituals are "magically good" or other rituals are "magically bad." But then, that is, more or less, exactly what Armstrongism proposes, does it not? This is simply superstition, like astrology, reading tarot, palms, or tea leaves.
That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof, and in fact should be, since no reason has been given to even suggest it merits any consideration whatsoever.
history is full of references of the evils of they who keep christmas and easter, whether it be the crusades, the spanish inquisition, priests molestation of children, the racist lynchings sanctioned by southern baptists, the extreme sexism of the mormons, etc. Their evil is well documented and systematic.
DeleteThese acts of evil have been occurring and have preceded the evils of the cogs by hundreds of years; the righteous indignation of you people against the cogs but your lack of criticism against the evils of the christmas keepers means you are not sincere in your hatred of religious evil but rather in your hatred of the cogs
Everybody did everything to everybody. Except for the people who didn't, which was fortunately the vast majority of humanity, that just wanted to live, raise their families, and be safe.
ReplyDeleteThe basic problem is this: Go to a Lutheran or Presbyterian church, and you are not going to be confronted with an all pervasive system of cruel and intrusive authority. Decisions which are a matter of personal development and character will be left up to the individual. Want to celebrate something with your family, and never even give it a second thought whether they happen to attend your splinter? Go ahead! Feel like maybe God uses doctors and what they have learned today? Fine! Pray for guidance for them. Does your sense of compassion well up and compel you to give a couple of bucks to a homeless person, knowing he's going to buy a short dog of wine to help him get through the cold winter night? Have at it. Feel like reasoning with your child and maybe giving him time-out rather than beating him within an inch of his life for some minor offense? Go for it.
But see, this is why the so-called COGs are so evil. Notable villains who happen to keep Christmas and Easter have occasionally done evil, but in the ACOGs, you are taught to do evil, and that that's God's way. This is why we want them to either realize they are following grave error, and to cease and desist, or to simply eat shit and die! No need to even equivocate on that one, so I guess you've got us cold!