It Is Memorial Day and a Doubly Cursed COG Leader Equates Fighting in War with Football
Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a day set aside to remember those who have died for our freedom.
The Church of God has always pretended to be a pacifist church that encouraged its members to not join the military. Members were encouraged to be Conscientious Objectors. Being a Contentious Objector usually meant serving in some non-profit civil community capacity for a couple of years. While the church encouraged members to do this, they end up treating those members attending the Ambassador Colleges like dirt. See: Failed Experiment
Ironically, despite being a pretend pacifist church, the church was very militaristic. How many remember sitting through a sermon by evangelists and some ministers listening to their military exploits. The church also would go into great detail using war as their weapon of fear when discussing the end times. The church would have no leg to stand on without war being part of their fearful scenarios. Plus, look at the title that church leaders used for decades, Pastor GENERAL. Church generals were leading an army of the faithful into the kingdom or to their deaths in Petra, if we really want to be truthful. We sang, Onward Christian Soldiers, with gusto and fervor. Some COG cult leaders taught their members that they would take up swards to kill apostates and help usher int he Kingdom. Others taught their members that they would be used by Jesus to slaughter all reprobates and evil doers in the millennium. Rod Meredith salivated over church members ruling with "rods of iron."
Today, Almost-arrested, Elisha, Elijah, Amos, Andy, Joshua, Habakkuk, doubly-
In Bitter Elisha Thiel's screed today he says this:
Today, many in the USA observe ‘Memorial Day.’ It was originally known as ‘Decoration Day.’ It started after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. By the 20th century, Memorial Day was extended to honor all Americans who have died while in the military service.A reader sent me a link to the following article about it:It is proper to pay respect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us. Memorial Day should also be a time of reflection on when it is moral for the United States to wage war and, if allowed, how this country should conduct war.War is awful. In these days of shallow, sanitized news coverage, the real horror of war rarely confronts us with the terrible death it levies against fellow humans, soldiers and civilians alike, and the maiming injuries, physical and psychological, it leaves behind in its wake…Over the centuries, religious leaders and moral philosophers have clarified moral principles for commencing a “just war.” Choices about war and peace involve not only military and political options, but also moral questions
...from the beginning of the New Testament church, true Christians (and even most of the heretical apostates) would not participate in carnal warfare.He then goes on to quote various Christian theologians to support his idea that war is not good. It is funny to watch Habakkuk Thiel use writing by Christians to support this views, and then a day later calls Christians outside his personality cult "so-called Christians" who are not worthy of being believed or read, because real truth only resides in the "continuing" Church of God channeled through his miraculous brain.
But then Elijah Thiel jumps off the deep end into his putrid swamp of "football is evil." Apparently in the deluded false prophet's eye, those that box and play football are equal in sinning as those fighting in a war.
Even today, many Christians realize that watching brutal events intent on causing physical harm, such as real boxing and American football, is inappropriate.His "proof" is:
Now, here is something from Theophilus of Antioch (who apparently was part of the Church of God) perhaps written about 180 A.D.:Consider, therefore, whether those who teach such things can possibly live indifferently, and be commingled in unlawful intercourse, or, most impious of all, eat human flesh, especially when we are forbidden so much as to witness shows of gladiators, lest we become partakers and abettors of murders. But neither may we see the other spectacles, lest our eyes and ears be defiled, participating in the utterances there sung. Theophilus of Antioch. To Autolycus, Book III, Chapter XV. Translated by Marcus Dods, A.M. Excerpted from Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2. Edited by Alexander Roberts & James Donaldson. American Edition, 1885. Online Edition)
He then goes on to quote Catholic theologians and even Christianity Today magazine to bolster his understanding. One day, he claims Christianity Today is produced by "so-called" Christan's and the next they are valid for use by him. Amos Thiel is a hypocrite every time he does this.So, true Christians did not believe that they were to fight nor even watch the violent sports that were popular in the second century.
He ends his screed with this:
So, as many remember the soldiers who died in warfare today, Christians can look forward to the time that there will be no more war nor pain of war.
While this is a valid and true comment that humanity would like to see happen, COG leaders need war to make their cultish utterances valid and keep their members quivering in fear.
Plus, you can bet delicate Thiel would welcome with open arms any military that would intervene in Arroyo Grande if there was a terrorist attack. Everyone else is expected to protect his family and personal freedoms, but he will not. Other people may freely die while he, the best doubly-blessed prophet in world history, gets to dream dreams and say stupid shit.
Rumor has it that Bob is cable subscribed to the "Curling Channell", as well as the "Croquet Channell" and the "Bowling Channel"
ReplyDeleteThiel's writer noted: "It is proper to pay respect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us. Memorial Day should also be a time of reflection on when it is moral for the United States to wage war and, if allowed, how this country should conduct war.
ReplyDeleteWar is awful. In these days of shallow, sanitized news coverage, the real horror of war rarely confronts us with the terrible death it levies against fellow humans, soldiers and civilians alike, and the maiming injuries, physical and psychological, it leaves behind in its wake…
Over the centuries, religious leaders and moral philosophers have clarified moral principles for commencing a “just war.” Choices about war and peace involve not only military and political options, but also moral questions"
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Well the anti war movement is alive here in America, and where I agree with the above statement, Thiel needs to be put on notice that football is not the issue here. It is war, death, and the consumption of the national treasury that is the concern.
Typical of a cog 'leader' to condemn what others have fought for, Bob has had no skin in the game so he should really just shut his trap. This guy Thiel has turned out to be one of the biggest morons I have ever heard (with the exception of Waterhouse) and continually spills his toxic waste in the laps of the idiots who listen to him. Does he ever stop and then think before he pushes publish???
All the COGs are basically fascist in thinking and in practice. Herb used to dogmatically say that democracy was not god's form of government. Fascists believe in war and violent force, and we looked forward to a returning Jesus with a sword in his hand and companies of armed angels. I didn't then see what I see now, but we actually gloried in the prospect of indescribable violence -- of a "godly" sort, of course. Anything the god we made up chose to do based on interpretations of nonsense such as The Book of Revelation was A-OK, and it was always going to be very violent at "the end." It was made holy by the fact that our made up god was going to be doing it. It was just a carryover of the violence that filled that part of the Middle Eastern and Roman world world. Yahweh started out as a tribal god of war, after all.
ReplyDeleteAllen C. Dexter
The whole society is loaded with posturing and lies and hypocrisy. To the hilt. A lot of the comments posted here are mere posturing. The people who make them don't believe it themselves, they are just hoping somebody else will. Truth is a lost virtue, never to arise again.
ReplyDeleteAll wars are banker wars. Those killed by them may have thought that they may die for their country, but the fact is, if they die, they are dying for the elite bankers.
ReplyDeleteRight now America is at war with the world. Some nut jobs like Hillary advocate a nuclear war with Russia. These advocates, including some generals, think that nuclear weapons are play toys, not realizing, I suppose, that the entire planet will be affected and billions will die.
We all know it is coming. Soon we will be nuclear ash blowing in the wind.
The Herbie churches teach its members to be passive (obey, yield, surrender, submit) while teaching that America should be a assertive roaring lion on the world stage. An contradiction. The reason being that they want America to be independent, so they can safely continue playing church.
ReplyDelete8.35PM
You've returned with your trolling comments. Don't you have a life?
The WCG had an inconsistent position on warfare. Being the unquestioning souls that they were, most members were not even aware of this insupportable belief. The WCG taught from the pulpit, for instance, that Native Americans should be violently exterminated. The WCG was an open advocate of genocide. Yet the ministry maintained that God should fight Israel's battles and draft eligible men should do alternative work to serving in the military. They even rejected the idea of a church member serving as a medic. Service had to be strictly non-military.
ReplyDeleteThe syllogism concerning Native Americans whom they grossly misidentified as "Canaanites":
1. We are bound to conform to all OT laws that are still in force.
2. The command to exterminate the Canaanites is still in force (attested to in many sermons).
3. Therefore, the modern day descendants of the Canaanites (Native Americans) should have been completely exterminated by the British people in the settling of North America.
4. Since the British people migrating to North America failed in this still obligatory duty, the WCG should exterminate all Native Americans just like the WCG keeps the Holy Days and dietary laws.
Except point 4 of the syllogism above was never explicitly stated. Point 3 emerged often. But somehow point 4 remained concealed. Likely because it contradicted the WCG position on participation in the military.
My guess is that most splinter groups still maintain this view. I heard it contradicted only one time. At the Friday night Bible Study in Big Sandy back in the Seventies, someone sent up a question asking whether or not Native Americans should now be exterminated. Ron Dart was doing the Bible Study and answered the question in the negative. He said further that if God had wanted American Indians exterminated, he would have sent a prophet to Washington DC to convey this message. I am not sure this view explained by Dart was every widely accepted.
Curiously, I had been on the receiving end of some gratuitous persecution from a small group of AC students concerning my Native American ancestry in the days just before the question went up to Dart. My guess is these same students generated this and expected Dart to actually reply affirmatively and then their predations against me could begin in earnest with the support of the Church. Oddly, one (or perhaps more) of the students was a homosexual and it remains mysterious to me why someone with a tenuous relationship with the WCG would try to generate similar problems for someone else.
Nearly forgotten history.
The COG's are all about contradiction and confusion.
ReplyDelete"God is not (the author) of confusion."
Therefore the COG's cannot be "of God". (Not saying that some within those groups are not Christian).
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Near Earth Object, when it became unacceptable to butcher the "savage" any more, the North American (U.S. and Canada) "chosen" people continued the attempted genocide of the Native American through cultural and tribal genocide by removal of their children and subsequent adoption by white people. Adoption by the "chosen/savior's" supposedly removes all impurities and bad labels such as bastard, illegitimate, heathen...etc.
Reading about the weird & wacky teachings of the Armstrong worshippers gives me reason to stay clear of those goof-balls.
ReplyDelete1.50 PM
ReplyDeleteI've been reading church literature since the mid 1960s, but have not once come across your accusation of WCG teaching the violent extermination of native Americans. And teaching it from the pulpit? Really? I don't believe you.
Feel free to point to literature or other evidence of your claim. I attended services for 8 years, but never came across such attitudes amongst members.
Because this is a dissident site, doesn't mean that we don't respect truth or tell monster lies.
On this blog some personal opinions of sermons by isolated individuals are soetimes highlighted as THE official phylosophy of wcg.
ReplyDeleteI never heard of bias against the natives as being not under the New Testament amendments or active preaching of extermination.
That being said. The identification with the "tribes of israel" could be extrapolated toward an indifference toward anglo saxon 19th and 20th century atrocities ranging from india, south africa, australia, the southern us and the plight of the native americans.
All in all the COG resided in the Dakotas, Iowa and Oklahoma territory along the natives even before the Civil War.
In their publication they railed against the sins of grandmothers smoking a pipe, and the sin of ice skating. (don t know what frivolity occured there but they were not alone in that pursuit) , received a black prince from ethiopia and opined against the SDA as to take up arms in the Civil War. But the extermination of natives is not a common denominator.
Perhaps to subject them to Christ as in Paul.
Nck
I can confirm that, while a student and/or employee at AC Pasadena, I did hear ministers say that the US should have wiped out Native Americans when whites took control of the North American continent. Herman Hoeh said it and I think other ministers did as well. I don't know that it was ever put in writing but I will see if I can find out.
ReplyDeleteGlenn Parker
AC Pasadena student 1967-1970
AC/WCG employee 1967-1978
There have been stories over the years of ministers and groups within congregations that hold to NEO's points 2 and 3, but I'm uncertain about 4.
ReplyDeleteBut if the colonial powers had wiped out the North American natives, there never would have been Ramona Armstrong and Bob Thiel.
And speaking of Bob, he said he enlisted in the military, and claims a conflict over being on duty and Sabbath or Holy Day observance was the source for the "almost arrested" tag. In his latest post, Bob says he was stationed in Vandenberg. However, not knowing what he actually did, I won't comment on his assessment of military matters and their loose links to prophecies.
Glenn
ReplyDeletePeople in every organization sometimes express fringe opinions. But that is very different to these opinions being the official policy or it being noticeable among the group. The accusation of genocide is a slur on the organization and the nation.
For the record, these native American tribes warred amongst themselves, and the torture of captives over several days was the norm. These natives were not Snow White.
If Glenn was an AC student. Then he should look up Dr Reah assessment of Hoeh s magnum opus.
ReplyDeleteIt is the masonic mirmon view of the native american brought by viking ship from scotland. The blue painted picts and black haired tribes of the western isles.
Nck
To Hoeh's credit , he did refute his own book of world history and tribal locations "The Compendeum" before he died.
ReplyDeleteYou will not find a single document in support of the genocide of Native Americans in WCG archives. You will find material identifying Native Amercans, quite erroneously, as Canaanites with all that implies. The genocide is not to be found in the Torah but in the Talmud. I have heard this genocide preached by the WCG ministry. I have heard Church members espouse this idea. In fact, wherever it became known I was of Native American descent in the WCG, someone would come up and remind me that Native Americans should have been exterminated.
ReplyDeleteI was eating dinner with a deacon and his wife after the Sabbath some years back and they both supported the idea that Native Americans should be "wiped out" as they said. They also threw the Hispanics into the mix. When this was spoken, with great authority, they both new I was of Native American descent. Where do you suppose they got this sincerely held idea?
Item 4 in the syllogism is a deduction. It is a deduction that the WCG logically could have made but never did.
Much of what the WCG did in the way of mistreatment of people is not documented. We have only the voices of those who were there to testify as to what happened. That is why blogs like this will continue to be important. The Herbite splinter groups are full of people who are the equivalent of Holocaust Deniers.
I wrote to GTA some years back and asked him about HWA's attitude towards Native Americans. He replied and said that he had never heard his father express anything negative about Native Americans. He felt that the negative attitude towards them was a by-product of the racism engendered by the BI doctrine.
ReplyDeleteIt is worthwhile to keep in mind that the accretion of WCG teaching included stuff that HWA did not teach. It was stuff generated in the lower ranks and entered into the WCG Talmud. Perhaps, Hoeh originated this idea of genocide - we will probably never know. Maybe it was some local elder making a sophomoric deduction after reading the Compendium of World History. Our history will always be incomplete. Many of the early eyewitnesses are either dead or dying.
As an AC 'dena student 1966-68, and WCG employee from 1966-1975, I also heard higher ranking ministers state in sermons and in class that the Israelite colonists had made the same disobedient mistake in failing to totally exterminate the Canaanites as their forefathers the ancient Israelites had done when entering the promised land.
ReplyDeleteFurther, there was a case being considered regarding an Anglo Saxon graduate of AC marrying the daughter of one of the prominent Mexican-American ministers. The minister had presented to the Armstrongs and church administration pictures of his relatives in Mexico who had light complexions, and blue eyes. The marriage was ultimately approved. In discussing this, some of us concluded that the church was not against intermarrying amongst Anglos and Spanish. It was intermarriage with the Native American percentage of Hispanic ethnicity that they found objectionable.
We had classmates who had high percentages of Native American DNA, and they too had to listen to a daily barrage of negative stereotyping about themselves in class, as did nearly anyone else who was not an Anglo-Saxon Gentile.
By the way, if anyone here is an objective thinker, a compassionate individual, go to Pam Dewey's "Meet Myth America", and read up on the Native American experience in American history. See if you can read about what happened on the trail of tears relocation program without being overcome by your own sense of humanity. As COGlodytes, we were deliberately and systematically blinded as to the plights of any people who were not descendents of the so-called chosen ones. In ancient times, we would probably have even believed that the good Samaritan should have been exterminated. Thank God for our awakening from Armstrong-induced racism! All human lives matter equally.
BB
NEO
ReplyDeleteI did acknowledge the syllogistic deduction part. You are right.
I do not agree with the implied answer to your rhetoric question.
The fact that you heard rednecks preach their personal theory does not match the 98 percent of ministers who never preached such thing. Especially not in the pacific isles, black africa, europe the scandinavian churches nor in the caribean. Neither does it fit the pilosophy of the church about the overlooked NT dogma.
But I do acknowledge personal theories by redneck american and some south african ministers that indeed hurt others by their fallacious preaching.
Nck
NCK:
ReplyDeleteI do not think this view on genocide was confined to the redneck fringe. It was mainstream doctrine but not often mentioned. That is the essential problem. If members had thought about it more, they would have understood the flawed theology of bringing OT concepts intact into the NT era. I think most Herbist members would have been appalled at the idea that the Native Americans should be exterminated in a holocaust similar to what happened at Auschwitz and Treblinka. But that is exactly what was being advocated by the WCG ministry by implication. And members would have understood this if they had reflected on it a little. The redneck fringe, of course, would have avidly looked forward to such a holocaust - maybe even participating in it to demonstrate their zeal for Israel. These are the same Herbists who laud the goals of the Confederacy.
Byker:
I think your viewpoint is well taken. Hispanics were objectionable and even had to have a separate Fun Night (how ironic) at the Feast in Big Sandy because they were people of color - mixed with Native American ancestry. Many Hispanics look like Palestinean Jews rather than Anglo-Saxons. If Jesus had been around he probably would have had to attend the Spanish Fun Night based on appearance alone. Some Deacon would have intercepted him and prevented him from attending the regular white people Fun Night.
But there is always the one-off. I knew a Puerto Rican staff member at AC BS and he looked very European but was forbidden to marry one of the white women on the AC staff. It would have been interesting to see what politics swirled around this decision. No doubt there was a competition going on to see who could be the most zealous among the involved ministers. In this case that wave of smarmy zeal extended to a guy who was really not mixed with Native American ancestry.
A Genetic Note:
The intermarriage proscriptions in the OT were not about race but about religion. Arachaeologists now know that the Canaanites were haplogroup J just like their Jewish first cousins. Jews and Canaanites are racially indistinguishable - just as ancient depictions indicate. This cuts the Hoehian theory of the races off at the knees. If Hermann were still alive, he would be backed into a corner and would have to extensively revise his interpretation of the OT or deny cold, rational scientific fact. Unfortunately, Herbism was locked in a time warp back during the last century. Hoeh never put pen to paper to do a revision. My guess is that he continued to hang on to these cherished ideas until the end.
A side note is that Native Americans are haplogroup P and Q. The Western Europeans are haplogroup R1b and R1a for the most part. They are derived from haplogroup P just like the Native Americans. Hispanics are a mix of R1b and Q. These various peoples have very close proximity on the genetic tree. You can look at this tree on Wikipedia and see this proximity. These are Eurasian peoples who spread from the steppes of Russia in different directions. None of them are closely related to Jews who are haplogroup J. The idea that the Spanish and Native Americans are Japhethic and the British are Semitic is sheer nonsense.
NEO,
ReplyDeleteWe are on the same wavelength my friend.
According to Hoehian mormon, masonic doctrine Spain was Tarshish and thus Japhetic.
I was chased by a native Counselor at SEP when I called him an Eskimo. What did I know that these people call themselves Inuit, I was 13 years old. I would apologize.
I think you make very balanced contributions and worth the read as evidenced by your remark.
"I think most Herbist members would have been appalled at the idea that the Native Americans should be exterminated in a holocaust"
nck