When Jesus returns the second time, before the third time, he will come to slaughter one at a time, three Church of God leaders. Dave Pack's "jesus" will then proceed to spend several more years killing all kinds of people. Why does the "god" that the various self appointed leaders of Armstrongism follow always need to be such a violent and perpetually pissed off creature?
If you really want to understand what we began to study four years ago—the “remnant” prophecy, where we were learning Christ was going to cut off three shepherds—the very first group of enemies that Christ deals with. So He starts with those enemies. When Christ begins to work…He says “Open the doors and let the fire devour the cedars” and He executes those three shepherds in sequence. The last one is Christ—remember—coming to His Temple…We will see that in a moment…and beginning a process that takes years, of where He gets rid of—He defeats—all His enemies.
14 comments:
Well posted.
This idea of an almighty God having to "fight" his enemies merely highlights the provincial and crude concept the bronze-age scribes had of their gods.
Really. An all-powerful deity would never need to get angry or worked up about anything. He would have perfect solutions to any "problem" and simply implement them. Or more to the point, also being of perfect intelligence, he would arrange things so that such problems never arose in the first place.
To continue my little spiel, consider the epic "battle" with Satan and 1/3 of the angels. It might play well in a Star Wars-like sci-fi novel, but really now.
Here you have, supposedly, a being created with very high intelligence (Lucifer). He *knows* God has infinite power beyond anything he could ever hope for, yet he decides to embark on a suicidal mission to dethrone the Creator. And 1/3 of a bunch of idiot angels support him in this pointless move?
If that were so, one can only marvel at what a bunch of mindless idiots the Creator managed to create...
Not to mention, there ought to have been no "battle" at all. God is all-powerful, end of story. There was no contest. No epic combat or struggle. No God getting angry and banishing Satan to eternal hell. Just an omnipotent deity smoothly solving the problem.
There is no Satan if there is an all-powerful god, or else he' all not all-powerful.
End of spiel
Satan = an ideation of failure.
If you own your mistakes, you can do something about it. Like learning, perhaps.
Or, you can do what most religions do. Find a scapegoat to suffer for your mistakes and learn nothing but how to make yourself look better for others to see.
DBP
Nice spiel....
Angry, vengeful, muddled and jealous Bible God would have done better had He cut out all the middlemen , showed up and spoken clearly to all. But then the middlemen aren't really in the middle. They are the gods.
9.58 PM another example of someone who doesn't know their bible. The reason God 'fights' His enemies etc, is that God honours reality. Which is why Christ turned the water (did He really need the water) into wine, and used a few fish and leafs of bread (again, did He need these small quantities at all) to multiple them and feed the multitude. He honoured reality in these examples, since wine is mostly water, and fish comes from fish (animal farming) and bread from 'bread'(growing grains).
The above is what happens when people don't study their bibles. So tell your kids to study hard, do their homework, otherwise they'll come to Banned, and post stupid comments.
And not forgetting, psychopaths lose their sense of reality, which is why Satan and his goons attacked God. Christ pointed this out when He stated that those who rebel against God, will lose even the little understanding that they have. Reject Gods ways, and people withdraw into a world of make-believe. Dave with his wacko sermons is proof of this.
Regarding anger and other emotions, what should we make of this LCG article?
Truth, Lies & Santa Claus
The article tells us:
Yet we should consider if emotions are a trustworthy guide to follow, especially when we are entrusted with the responsibility of teaching young children to become God-fearing adults. As a father of three young boys I take this humbling responsibility very seriously, as I’m sure many other parents also do. Most of us have learned either through personal experience or observation that following a course of action based largely upon emotion is a fool’s errand.
Does this tell us that LCG members are a depressed and joyless lot? Have they not read the many Bible verses exhorting us to joy? Have they not read of David dancing before his Lord? For that matter, if emotions are so awful, what about the righteous anger Christians are supposed to feel when faced with lawlessness? What about the LCG members' own angry God?
Any cult that tells people "emotion is bad, reason is good" and then tells them "since you can't trust your own heart or mind, reason is what we say it is," is setting itself up as a prison for depressed people.
The article goes on to warn people against enjoying the obviously false Santa Claus story. Well, if it is emotional and sinful to enjoy an obviously false story, why does LCG still tell the false story of British Israelism, which is as easily disproved as Santa Claus? If reason must trump emotion, LCG's irrational attachment to the falsehoods of BI must be just as evil, if not more so, than the Santa story. "Physician, heal yourself!" (Luke 4:23)
"God learns how to control His temper... on the next Dr. Phil."
"The above is what happens when people don't study their bibles. So tell your kids to study hard, do their homework, otherwise they'll come to Banned, and post stupid comments."
Amen
Anonymous 4:55 AM, good points, but must disagree: British Israelism is much easier to disprove than Santa Claus, unless, of course, you attend the LCG BI course (and just why is it given? Utter nonsense!).
Still, one must consider that Dr. Phil said, "Emotions got you into this problem, and emotions will get you out of it," then proceeded to show how reason, logic, science and facts would get the person out of the problems.
The truth is that Armstrongism is based on emotion -- not the ones you think of, like, say, love, joy, generosity, forgiveness, warmth, friendship; no, indeed, the emotions Armstrongism evoke are anger, hatred, rage, selfishness, overindulgence, greed (my church has more members than your church!) and out and out lust.
The only way Armstrongists will EVER overcome their emotions (fear, suspicion, superiority) is through self-control: They must control their emotions and, really, it would be a good idea that they suppress them entirely, given the negativity of the II Timothy 3 scenario.
But, according to Scripture (Galations 5:23), self-control (temperance) is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, something quite evidently lacking in the people who need it most, as is evidenced by the hate filled responses to the death of Gavin Rumney posted on the very blog he hosted.
Perhaps these hate filled angry Armstrongists could benefit by being on the Dr. Phil show (at least the public would be benefitted by being warned by their aberrant behavior on camera), but the real problem here is that they enjoy being filled with hate: It makes them feel better; it maximizes their dopamine levels. Of course, it's damaging to the point of being fatal physically, but, heck, look how anger sustained Herbert Armstrong for 9 decades and Roderick Meredith for 8 decades. It made them 'powerful'. You DON'T KNOW THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE (to coin a phrase).
Emotions. Can't live with out them... well, actually, you can and if you do live without them, you can objectify people and become one of the 1% billionaires of the world (unfortunately, that's the only incentive I can offer, given how stubborn and recalcitrant Armstrongists are, resistant and totally impermeable to science and truth -- but then, being rich could make you feel good... or not: At least you could pick your misery with some objectivity). [For more information on this, watch ex Machina, available for free to those who have Amazon Prime Video.]
And speaking of Santa Claus, be sure to catch, I'm Dreaming of a Racially Ambiguous Holiday.
This is also why the parenting skills amongst members are so horribilious! They see their Father in this way, and act it out on their children. The results with their children should demonstrate for them that something vital was lacking in their anthropomorphism, but the doctrines related to church authority prevent them from thinking that through to logical conclusion.
They refer back to Jesus' statement that He will place a sword between Christians and their friends and family, and extrapolate, using it as a catch-all for everything that goes wrong in any of their relationships, even if it was a totally correctable action that they, and not their belief in Jesus, caused.
BB
December 22nd and no baleful comment/sermons about NIMRODS TESTICLES?
Wow, did you know fish comes from fish and bread comes from grain? And here I thought this was a bastion of spontaneous generation.
RSK, I have been reading church literature since the 1960s, and listened to umpteen sermons, yet have never heard that 'fish comes from fish..' is God honouring reality.
Why must people mock a good point? Don't you have a life or better things to do with yourself, other than just belittle others?
Nope, took me all of oh, maybe 1-2 minutes of reading the thread in passing to find such Captain Obvious statements as "fish comes from fish" funny. You might find great meaning in dramatic pronouncements of water being wet, too, but I see nothing profound in the remark.
My point was that God honours the reality that He created. If you are not interested in ideas, why do you come here? Why not go elsewhere and not herass us?
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