The legalists that claim to follow every word of God faithfully are the biggest law breakers around. While they spit and snarl at church members stopping at Starbucks on a long drive to church or grabbing a warm doughnut, they click their tongues in disgust and indignation.
A Malmite writes:
Once paying people to work for you [Supposedly converted people] is considered “okay”, it certainly is a slippery slope. Next thing you know it’s “okay” to stop at 7-11 or Starbucks for coffee on the way to church, or it’s okay to fly home from the Feast, or buy some donuts for Sabbath brunch, or to conveniently stop at the grocery store for something to bring for after services, or BBQ a huge dinner for guests, or why not have a reunion picnic with family who don’t keep the Sabbath, or have a workman service your plumbing problem or play some backgammon. Next thing you know it’s just like a Sunday service you go to on Saturday with all these other distractions that aren’t even Sabbath related! I have seen all these things and many more in LCG!! Horrified I even saw someone run to the store on the Sabbath for Club Soda so they could make more mixed drinks for their guests since they ran out! Wow!! The list could go on and on. I certainly think HWA was wrong to put his stamp of approval on “eating out” but he probably would roll over in his grave to see what is considered Sabbath observance today by ELDERS and brethren!!
16 comments:
"...or play some backgammon."
What's next? Cards? Horrors!!!
hahahahahahahahaha!
Better not drive in a car on the Sabbath, since the driver would be "working." Shut off the water and electricity to your house on the Sabbath. The water, sewer, electricity plant operators are working on the Sabbath. Shutting the water supply would, of course, mean the toilet would start smelling, but it would be a small sacrifice.
Meredith's sermons, or should I say sermon because they all sound the same, are so uninspiring, predictable and often offensive. I'm surprised LCG members aren't drinking BEFORE church just to make it through the afternoon.
or it’s okay to fly home from the Feast
Are airplanes now unclean? Do Malmites walk home from the Feast, or is there now some reason why buying gasoline on the Sabbath is OK, but using a plane ticket you bought months earlier is NOT OK?
But what if you buy gasoline to drive home on the Sabbath? Can you then buy a burrito at the gas station? Or is it only OK to buy gasoline?
Legalism is clearly a gateway drug to the kind of insanity we find in a Dave Pack, Ron Weinland, James Malm, etc.
A reunion picnic with family who don’t keep the Sabbath?
A donut??
Backgammon on the Sabbath??
WHAT A PRUDE AND PHARISEE!
Would love to hear her detailed response about having SEX on the Sabbath!
You mean I can no longer play backgammon while talking about the sermon????????
Apparently, the Sabbath was made for Malm.
If read Ezra and Nehemiah, of course you may get the idea that no one should participate in any business on the Sabbath.
That's assuming, of course, you really know what day the Sabbath is.
And don't pretend we can really know one way or another.
HWA used to go on big extravagant shopping trips to Harrods in London. He liked Saturday shopping because he didn't have to worry about running into members who might see his unrestrained spending habits with their tithe money.
Connie Schmidt said, "Would love to hear her detailed response about having SEX on the Sabbath!"
MY COMMENT - I remember hearing in a couple of sermons in the 1960s WCG where members were encouraged from the pulpit to abstain from marital relations on the Sabbath.
Richard
Blessings by God for keeping the sabbath James Malm's way....
http://tinyurl.com/oy3ef2r
Last night, I had one of those snapshot in time dreams resurrecting the Zeitgeist from the mid-'90s. It was very vivid. On a bright sunny day, I was riding my Harley on a slightly curved concrete bridge with fairly low side rails, similar to one on Pacific Coast Highway somewhere near or above the North county area of San Diego. My ex-wife was on the back of the bike, and remarked that she could hear the opening act from the concert arena which was coming into view. She asked if I could tell her who was playing, and I told her it was Doyle Bramhall Jr. We arrived at the bar where we were supposed to meet up with some friends of ours, and I did something that was part of my routine during those days. I proceeded to ride the bike into the bar! The bouncer was polite, and asked me if we could take the bike to the motorcycle parking area while my wife found us a table. When we returned, from the parking area I sat down at the table to a tall glass of Budweiser, and we waited for our friends John and Kim to arrive as we reminisced about some of the good times and good runs we'd been on with them in the past.
The thing is, and the way this ties into Malm and the ACOGs is that when people are coerced into living under purely arbitrary authority, with repressive, anal retentive "laws", it does not produce spiritual growth. It stifles and kills the human spirit, something that requires years from which to recover. Conformity was produced under the duress of false prophecies. When one finally wakes up, and in recovering, often one swings to the other extreme for a while, confronting stupid rules and conventions and finding different ways of confusing self-important administrators of arbitrary authority, and making them miserable as payback for what they do, and how they enjoy their jobs too much.
The trauma or assault of Armstrongism is extreme. Different people react in different ways according to their own genetics and particular personalities. I probably spent 25 years behaving in the manner depicted in my dream, and worse. Towards the end of the 25 year run, after having been escorted from a private yacht club bar into which I had followed some members while the key-carded gate remained open, (the escort out simply based on my appearance!) I began to wonder if maybe it wouldn't be preferable to be able to be accepted by and to relate to some of the people that I made into straw men. They hadn't been the ones who were guilty of inflicting the Armstrongism on us.
Though I still enjoy my hobbies, I've toned down the outlaw aspects somewhat. Seems like it is more constructive to write about the bogusness and repression of the cult experience.
BB
Black Ops Mikey said...
“That's assuming, of course, you really know what day the Sabbath is.”
“And don't pretend we can really know one way or another.”
That “lunar Sabbath” theory lunacy that you linked to is just another example of you practicing your “Black Operations” specialty of spreading disinformation in a deliberate attempt to try to confuse other people. The idea of the weekly, seventh-day Sabbath comes from the Bible as it has been passed down to us. Those kooks that you linked to got their “lunar Sabbath” confusion, appropriately enough, from Babylon. Such a wild theory carelessly assumes that God did not inspire or preserve the Bible accurately at all, and that Jesus himself was wrong in his understanding of the Sabbath and when to observe it. Furthermore, those kooks then seem to think that people still ought to observe some sort of “lunar Sabbath” according to their own weird and totally inconvenient ideas.
If you have any legitimate criticisms of the COGs--and I am sure there could be many, from wrong prophetic guesses to numerous other abuses--feel free to express them here. But stop pretending that we cannot really know one way or another when the Sabbath is. That is just your own personal confusion of the mind curse that you are suffering under as punishment for your own disobedience to God's laws. Do you really want your own life record to have to include the fact that you helped to spread even crazier theories than Gerald Flurry, Bob Thiel, James Malm, and so many others?
Lunar sabbaths from Babylon? Where are the footnotes for that? I poured over everything I could find on this topic when it first was raised, and the Babylonians were cited as being one of the first civilizations to have a fixed calendar, but not for practicing lunar sabbaths. That smacks of the same logic inherent in blaming Nimrod and Semiramis for everything pagan.
To the Armstrongite mind, God would not allow the knowledge of His Holy Sabbath to be lost, but actually did allow the "true" gospel to be lost for nearly 2,000 years, until HWA restored it. This is situational logic, the same type always used to support Armstrongite doctrine. It sounds good, but when you test it, it evaporates before your very eyes. The fact is, there are great expanses of time when scripture was actually lost, or was incapable of being understood by the illiterate masses.
Jesus and the disciples were described as being at temple on the sabbath (which, since this was 300+ years before Hillel II and the fixed calendar, could have actually been lunar sabbaths), but nowhere in the New Testament does it specifically say that they kept the sabbath. The only specific NT statement that anyone kept the sabbath is about the Galilean women who were preparing the dressings to embalm Jesus' physical body. And, this was in the confusion amongst the disciples, who did not yet know the implications of Jesus' death, and could have been in the same vein as Peter's "I go fishing." Jesus also left out the sabbath when reciting the commandments. Because of the absence of specific statements, some scholars have speculated that Jesus and the disciples went to temple specifically to evangelize the Jews "to the Jew first, and then to the Gentiles." Jesus was also in Temple for the Festival of Lights (Hannukkah).
When you ask yourslf, "Would God allow the specific date of Jesus' birth to be lost so that nobody could observe His birthday?", it is logical to also ask, "Would God allow the specific time of the sabbath to be lost because He did not intend for His children to be keeping it under the New Covenant?" Inability to harmonize a purely lunar calendar with a fixed calendar would certainly do an awfully good job of accomplishing that!
The lunar calendar sites cite the scrolls of the Essenes which were secular, the sites also quote Josephus, Irenaeus, Jules Africanus, Philo, and others. They invoke the seven day march around Jericho, which would technically break the sabbath as we know it, and explain nuances of third month vs fourth month harvests in explaining the counting of Pentecost , and describe the interplay between Rabbi Hillel's fixed calendar and the Julian calendar.
This is not disinformation, or black ops stuff. It is being taken very seriously by other sabbatarian churches such as the Seventh Day Adventists.
By the way, if anyone honestly believes that God requires you to keep Saturday as the sabbath here under the New Covenant, do it! Until you know otherwise, you do not want to take the chance of searing your conscience!
BB
In view of the knowledge of lunar sabbaths, is it possible that the prophecy in Daniel 7 and 8 about the little horn changing time has already been fulfilled? HWA taught that the Hislop view of Catholicism being regurgitated Babylonian mystery religion is correct. The Babylonians were one of the first civilizations to have a fixed calendar.
~Miguel de la Rodente
"Such a wild theory carelessly assumes that God did not inspire or preserve the Bible accurately at all, and that Jesus himself was wrong in his understanding of the Sabbath and when to observe it."
Yep, because a theory about a prosaic, naturalistic reality, in which there are no miracles, magic, mystics, or supernaturally authored books...is obviously such a WILD theory...
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