Now the second most amazing campus in the entire universe is going to be protected from the wrath of Jesus and war. Jesus is returning to Wadsworth there He operates the First Dominion from Dave's Hall of Ad.
“Bless the LORD, O my soul, O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with honor and majesty. [This is a description of God.] You cover yourself with light as with a garment: who stretched out the heavens like a curtain: Who lays the beams of his chambers in the waters: who makes the clouds his chariot…” (Psa. 104:1-3).You’ve got a couple of possibilities. What clouds?…Cirrus? Stratus? Nimbus? Cumulus?…Back to ninth grade science there…I know some of those get mixed in. You can have some of them work as a hybrid…or are they the “clouds of heaven?” Well, they have to be the clouds of heaven. First of all, these are clouds that can move at the speed of thought, so these are divine clouds. They are spirit clouds. They are not clouds from Earth. Now, if they are, since Christ travels in clouds, He has to travel to Earth, drop off His clouds and pick up some locals…[laughter] You understand? I’m not trying to be funny here. I’m just trying to tell you, you have to think through. Because remember, we are going to see some verses when Christ comes to the earth, it says He comes with the clouds of heaven. So it’s not the clouds of this first heaven. There are no clouds that I know of in the second heaven. But He makes the clouds His chariot. Now this is fascinating…Are these billowy clouds? Well, they’re not like clouds we’ve seen. So the best you can probably speculate…That’s all it would be…these are chariot-shaped clouds. If they are not, we don’t know. But they are spirit clouds. They’re the clouds of heaven, unless in the third heaven, they have clouds that can rain or look like the clouds of Earth…and if that happens, then I guess we’ll learn. But those clouds all have substance in them. I’ve never heard anything…Mr. Armstrong has never said there is anything in the third heaven that’s not spirit…everything is spirit. So these would be spirit clouds…and that’s kind of an interesting thing, because there are many other places that talk about Christ coming. Remember in Acts 1 and verse 6…verse 9, he was taken up by a cloud…“When he had spoken these things, while they beheld, [Acts 1:9] he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.” Now…I’m going to show you later, that can be a cloud or clouds. But it says a cloud received Him out of their sight.
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First of all, let’s imagine it’s incredibly hot fire…Is this a question for us someday when Christ comes to His Temple? It would scorch everything, even if it was regular fire. You would have to have it far away. If it came to this campus, or stood over the tabernacle…bye-bye tabernacle…very fast…unless it’s a fire the size of a match and then it might burn a little bit of it or something, and nobody would see it. So it’s a pillar of fire. So I would submit to you that it’s fire that does not consume unless God wants it to.
I would submit to you, unless there’s some other verse you can turn, to these are divine clouds and divine fire that will not burn or do not carry moisture. It isn’t Christ brings…Well, if My fire gets out of hand, I’d better have some clouds with moisture to kind of calm Myself down. You see? I’m trying to make it facetious a little bit. This is the sign of the son of man, and…it’s what we’re waiting for. Over and over and over again, as I said earlier, the apostles told the brethren to wait for Jesus Christ. And we get a little bit of the picture here…There a little, here a little, there a little…you put it all together…we’re waiting for quite a picture.
And now you have a bigger idea of what’s coming, and why the campus won’t be scorched, and There will not be rain out of these clouds…and why it works day and night. Are these clouds that glow during the day in some way? The answer, brethren, is I would not speculate. Christ made clouds—they may be chariots that can be turned into clouds. Wouldn’t it be interesting if it was a giant chariot? I have no idea. It says it’s a column, so I doubt that. But I’m just going to tell you these are not clouds from Earth. It says He comes from the clouds of heaven, and Daniel 7:13 says those clouds are in the third heaven. And you have to have Him…He’s like a bus commuter…He takes the bus a certain distance, gets off with His ticket and takes another bus. And I just leave you to think about that—for multiple reasons.
Sorry, Dave! I stand with the Rolling Stones on this issue. Get off my cloud!
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The key to the lack of growth in the ACOGs which had sprung up in the aftermath of 1995, is that none of the leaders or professing heirs had one particular talent which Herbert W. Armstrong both had, and applied. That is, the ability to collect a group of people, to get inside of their heads, and to induce and repeat regular communal experiences.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I seriously doubt that any of the ACOG leaders know that such a power or talent even exists. Herbert may have sensed that he had this power, but while he obviously used it in building his empire, he may never have intellectualized it or acknowledged its existence. Yet it is something that aspiring guru types from the time of the shamans forward have sought, some have learned, and then succeeded in utilizing to various degrees of success, and for better or worse in their followers' lives. It is a power that can be magnetic, and goes way beyond hypnotic. "Collectors" all have it to one degree or another, but it is rarely something that can be passed successfully to an inheritor or heir. In most cases, it remains unacknowledged.
Why bring this up now? It is the one thing that would explain the recent behavioral patterns of Dave Pack. It is something that he has realized exists, and is making a ham-fisted attempt at cultivating and honing. We see his failures, but are these actually learning experiences for him? The only question is does he actually have enough time left in his life to perfect this talent, and to begin inflicting exponentially greater damages on his targets?
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When I was in high school, my brother's landlady got me to attend a seminar headed by this 40ish academic looking guy with a beard and a suit coat with patches on the elbow.
ReplyDeleteHe was giving a little talk / seminar which left me quite disturbed: He had an audience of no more than 15 in an auditorium that would hold 75; the rest of the crowd looked upon him reverently as he began his lecture...
About how the earth was hollow, with people living on the inside and using flying saucers to fly out the North Pole. He said he could prove that there was no molten interior: "If you have a wooden apple box," he said, "and you build a fire and cover it with the box, what happens? The fire burns through the box; therefore, there can be no fire inside the earth!"
I knew quite a lot about science. I had, after all, built a binary counter from relays at the age of 12 and built the 24 DC power supply for it. It had lights and everything.
At the end as I was trying to get out the door, he singled me out and stood in the way. "What did you think of my talk," he queried.
There was a pregnant pause, and then... "Interesting," I said, and headed for the door.
This little drama play of Davie Pack just seems to be so very much like that.
Because you know, British Israelism worst science fiction ever.
Analyze the effectiveness of all of the aspiring Armstrongite franchisees based on what I presented in my post above.
ReplyDeleteDoes Bob Thiel, or the people we normally mention on his level of the pyramid, have the ability to induce a communal experience? No. They've bought into Herbert's sleight of hand. HWA did a bait and switch, diverting all attention to the so-called commission which enabled him to live like a king, hob nob with real ones, and assume a quasi-biblical status that is still much in evidence today.
Does Rod Meredith have it? Not in the least. His entire ministry is based on supposed ascendency, as third in command.
Does anyone at UCG or COGaWa have it? No. They have ceased functioning as first generation personality cults of HWA, and lack any sort of central heir type figure. They bought into Herbert's overt (the theology) and have missed out on the subliminal (the power which caused the growth and dominance).
Does Gerald Flurry have it? No! He was the first "preservationist" alternative to Tkachism, made his bones by aquiring many of the HWA artifacts (kind of like the Rambaldi artifacts on "Alias"), and building a campus, but the lack of the real power is now causing decay and contraction.
We can apply this pretty much equally to all of the pretenders to the HWA throne. Many are so coo coo for Cocoa Puffs that they are really perceived as either crazy or a joke.
The ACOGs, if they desire vibrancy or growth, and the ability to effectively get their message out, have only two choices: they either need to REALLY find God, or they should attempt to cultivate this missing and heretofore unacknowledged power that Mr. Armstrong most definitely had. Obviously, I am biased in which choice I believe that they should make.
BB
The COGs think they are God's chosen people and ultra super-duper special. They got this from the Jews. It's the same thing the Jews think today. The origin of the COG cult is the cult of Judaism, which should make it a legitimate topic for deconstruction on this blog. Christianity was invented by Jews to make Gentiles docile and pro-Jewish, but not Jewish enough to be members of the real Chosen People (as the Jews see it). So Christians worship the Jew Jesus. And Christians today are still largely controlled by Jewish propaganda. That's why Christians think Martin Luther was an antisemitic Jew hater. The Jews told them so. And why do Jews denigrate Luther? Because he refuted Jewish beliefs in defense of Christianity. Because he believed the New Testament which says Mary was a holy woman impregnated by God, while the Jews say she was a slut. He believed Jesus was the son of God, whereas the Talmud says Jesus is in hell boiling in semen and manure for being a false Messiah.
ReplyDeleteDo the math, folks. On HWA's death, if the Holy Spirit had been responsible for raising up the WCG, restoring any truths, or causing it all to grow, then when HWA died, the Holy Spirit would have jumped the gap. On to the next, to take it to the next level. There would have been an Elijah to Elishalike transfer. That never happened. There are no standouts!
ReplyDeleteHWA as a human knew how to cause a communal experience, a gathering of the tribes as it were, in much the same way as have Rush Limbaugh, the Grateful Dead, Ronald Reagan, or Oprah Winfrey. If Pack succeeds in replicating this process, he will become what he has preached against!
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Boy, and here I thought Luther's own writings were plain enough. Or did the Jews forge those?
ReplyDeleteThe COGs are in fact ultra super duper special. Long, long ago, I asked God to give me as a wife, a nice woman I just met. The answer I got was 'no, since you are holy.'
ReplyDeleteYep, we are ultra ultra super duper most-magnificently, extraordinarily, unbelievably, super-set-apart, closely-observed-by-angels, specially blessed, most majestic, royally special.
Did I leave anything out?