Anon 2 3:45 wrote:
"18 Lectures over 34 hours in 5 days of BS is still....well you know."
Can you imagine sitting there for 34 hours listening to these morons speak on the following topics? Never once was Jesus mentioned, the New Covenant, grace, mercy, justice were never part of the conference. What was promoted were ways for the ministers to keep the members under control and every thing possible directing PCG ministers to the old covenant.
Prophet/Apostle Gerald Flurry...“Micah and the throne of David,” around the scripture that specifically discusses a king inside God’s Church:...Mr. Flurry’s next two messages centered on “Ezra and the throne of David.” The ruin-raising book of Ezra-Nehemiah is for the pcg today, yet it is missing David’s throne. We are bringing the throne into that picture. He talked about how Ezra established the law and administered God’s government. He also shared new revelation God gave about Jeremiah’s commission, showing how it provides further scriptural proof that a change in the throne was necessary. The first two of these messages were played in all congregations in late July and early August.
In his fourth message, Mr. Flurry encouraged the ministers to fall in love with the Bible. He used examples from Ezra, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Armstrong, and even Dr. Eilat Mazar—both in terms of her using the Bible as a guidebook for her archeology and the need to dig into Bible study. He also gave the ministers practical instruction on pastoral matters such as inviting people to services and helping single Church members.
Evangelist Stephen Flurry...showed video footage of Queen Elizabeth ii’s coronation in 1953, revealing how steeped in the Bible it was. He then detailed the problems plaguing the current royal family, particularly since the throne moved this past January. He then gave seven characteristics we need to develop as God’s king-priests.
Stephen Flurry amplified that theme in his second lecture, “Step Forward and Lead,” giving practical instruction from Paul’s pastoral epistles on how ministers can implement God’s government in our homes and congregations, and help the Church’s families to do the same. He also gave the sermon on the Sabbath on the subject of “ The New Royal Family,” showing how God’s people today have replaced the British royal family and must act accordingly.
Pastor Andrew Locher...compared the current state of the pcg with that of the wcg in 1981 in terms of spiritual organization, corporate structure, finances, members, ministers, congregations—and showed how God really has raised the ruins of Mr. Armstrong’s work “As in the Days of Old.”Yeah right. WCG had 150,000 members, Flurry is lucky to have 3,000-4,000 these days.
Evangelist Wayne Turgeon...built his first lecture around the motto of Ambassador College “Recapture God’s True Values,” detailing several of these values including love, temperance, humility, dependability, initiative, enthusiasm, and repentance.Wayne Turgeon preaching on love, humility, and repentance is hilarious. We have all read here over the years how he exemplifies NONE of these characteristics. He was a pompous jerk when he was here in Pasadena and that has not changed.
Pastor Brian Davis...“Make Full Proof of Your Ministry,” instructing on how to strengthen Church members and help their joy, protect the flock, anticipate problems, develop our minds, and improve our education.
Preaching Elder Brad Macdonald...advocated “Using Bible Prophecy in Our Daily Ministry,”
Elder Ryan Malone...shared practical help on “ the Importance of Using Analogies, Metaphors and Comparisons in Teaching and Speaking” in helping people grasp abstract spiritual truths.These are perfect topics for a guy still in the closet.
Another recurring theme was the ministers’ need, both personally and in counseling people, to overcome human nature and purge human reasoning, and to rely on God and His government.When has any COG minister EVER purged human reasoning? It is impossible! Particularly for cult ministers set in their ways and seeking to control members. They certainly are not thinking godly.
Evangelist Alex Harrison’s first lecture, “I Can of Myself Do Nothing,” was built on a 2004 article by Gerald Flurry to the ministry about submitting to God in every detail and allowing Him to supply the wisdom needed to serve God’s people.
Pastor Wik Heerma spoke on how important it is for ministers and members to “Overcome the Works of the Flesh” and walk in the Spirit.
Pastor Fred Dattolo contrasted “God’s Law vs. Satan’s Law,” exposing ways we can unwittingly obey Satan’s law of vanity, or self-love; then describing how to obey the spirit of each of the Ten Commandments.
Pastor Joel Hilliker showed how we must live “ the Way of the Servant,” which primarily means listening to and carrying out our Master’s (and our physical boss’s) instructions precisely and cheerfully.In other words, being autotrons slobbering at the feet of the Dear Leader and clinging to every word he says as if God himself was speaking it.
Mr. Harrison’s second lecture drew on Mr. Armstrong’s example to prove that “God Doesn’t Play Second Fiddle” and that our hearts must be fully in His Work.Hearts must be fully engaged in promoting and paying for Gerald's imaginary work, while telling Jesus to screw off.
Pastor Cal Culpepper spoke on the need to “Strengthen the Family of God,” specifically by instructing men to lead their lives and their families with robust male Christian leadership.What a hypocritical prick Culpepper is to be preaching about this topic! He has ripped families apart. Separated children from parents. He has ordered family members to abandon a child at the mall so the state could take care of it; so the parents could give more money to the church. The list of abominable atrocities he has committed is long and have been documented here and on other blogs and web sites.
Mr. Turgeon finished the conference with a lecture on how to build “God’s Uncommon Sense,” growing in wisdom and judgment through understanding God’s law and principles of cause and effect.The law trumps everything.
Every lecture is a form of "we should-we must". Shoulding all over the audience and Must-rabating is an empty vessel from which all simply walk away from thinking somehow that all made them better. I sat through hundreds of these and the older I got the more impatient with the shallow and useless nature of this type of learning. 12 Ways to Build a Happy Marriage" do not make a happy marriage. People just take down the points and walk away feeling they put in their time usefully which they did not. 7 Proofs of God prove nothing about God that can't be explained in other more logical and scientific ways. What God tormented Job over in the day if he was so smart, we now have all the answers to and the questions posed to Job in the day would be moot and useless.
ReplyDeleteThese kinds of meetings and seminars are simply sales meetings with the middlemen being instructed by others how to be . A real man is who he is as he is the way he is without all the shallow input of the Shoulders and Musters. A real man lives his life from the inside out not the outside demands of others for him in. A real man is able to say to others, "Don't tell me how to think, what you think I need to do for you or what something means to you which may have many other meanings for me, or none."
Men like Pack, Flurry, Thiel, Malm and many other bit players on the stage of life and learning are programmers of others and not teachers. They are God's Gestapo, doing as they also are told or believe they are told by a Bronze Age document ostensibly written and handed down by a god when it's all written by men imagining what their god wants, thinks and demands.
Dave Pack is the absolute worst example of one giving their mind over to a malignant programmer. For all these ministers and members one of life's greatest lessons lies just ahead. Think for yourself. Be yourself unapologetic-ally and be willing to tell others your bullshit meter is running off the scales on what they just demanded you believe and do.
If you fall in love with the Bible, are your sermon notes your flog-log?
ReplyDeleteTHIRTY FOUR HOURS OF LECTURE ???
ReplyDeleteAmazing, for you can hear the ENTIRE BIBLE read at regular sermon speed, voiced aloud in just 70 hours!
These ministers demand that others religiously play by the rules (as defined/rigged by them) while they give themselves the right to be above the law. This gives them a enormousness competitive advantage in dominating/lording/exploiting others.
ReplyDeleteDennis,
ReplyDeleteYou can't say 'don't tell me what to think...' to the Gestapo ministers. Sadly, they are on a higher power level to the members with their power to separate members from their friends and family by putting them out of the church.
It really sucks. Members pay their ministers wages, yet the ministers are the boss. Where else do you get such nonsense?
Join my organisation, tithe to it, and in exchange we rob you of your rights. Insanity!
This pretty much illustrates the major problem in Armstrongism today. It relates to PCG, but applies to all of the ACOGs to one degree or another.
ReplyDeleteHerbert Armstrong was a convincing closer. He was able to close complete outsiders on the necessity of his church in their lives. Once closed, he exercised complete control over those lives.
The ACOGs have lost or become ineffective in closing the outsiders, and are therefore failing to grow. It has nothing to do with God calling or not calling people, as Armstrongism is man-made, and we can see more and more of the man-made elements being introduced into the basic theology with the passage of time.
The ACOGs are also to a large extent, (though they try and try, some through draconian authority), losing the ability to control those who have become insiders. Too many prophecies have failed, there are too many alternatives since there is no longer just one central group, and the heavy handed approach just becomes too much to withstand, making it easy for members to go independent, or to walk away.
Armstrongism, though never possessing mass appeal, was only credible during a specific time, with specific surrounding conditions, and with a specifc state of knowledge and more importantly, the availability of that knowledge. Although the conditions were on the wane in the years leading up, the final coffin nails were hammered in sometime around the dawning of the year 2,000. That is when Armstrongism was pushed by the Zeitgeist over the precipice, its self-defined or applied mission not having been fulfilled.
The difference between poser and closer has a certain je ne sais quois aspect for most. The way in which one discerns that difference is through the actual results. Would Flurry and his henchmen be closers in another environment? That, in and of itself, is doubtful. The only certainty is that in attempting to sell a product whose viability, time and date stamp has long since expired, they are not even effective bottom feeders as was HWA. Unbeknown to them, they are simply posers going through harmful motions.
BB
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ReplyDeleteI wonder how five days of Flurryism compares to Malm's eight days of Deuteronomy?
ReplyDeletePastor Brian Davis said: :develop our minds, and improve our education."
ReplyDeleteStep 1: Discard any literature produced by WCG
Step 2: Read, with an open mind, from legitimate works of scholarship
Are we not supposed to "grow in grace and knowledge"? How can you grow in knowledge if all they do is repeat and reinforce what little they think they know?
When I try to read what they publish today, it is like stepping back in time to the early 70's. The same stuff, nothing new. No intellectual growth. But I should expect nothing more since to read anything outside the WCG is to expose oneself to errors from the lost, pagan, so-called churches. What makes their ignorance even more distressing is that it is coupled with arrogance.
Anon 1029
ReplyDeleteI understand that. I was speaking or meaning to speak of my own telling any number of church members from outside my area who came to me about their crazy pastor and what to do. I told a member in Kentucky who Joe Tkach and my own assistant told to close his whole store for the week of UB to leave it open and just do the UB at their home. It was only an object lesson. He told Tkach and my assistant he would remain open and I was proud of him. I would have intervened but didn't have to. He took care of it and stood up for his business and himself. I survived not do any number of things I was told to do or say which I found stupid, offensive or wrong.
I never told any couple to separate over D and R issues or interpretations but miraculously every couple that had been married before and came into the church was free to remarry and no biggie. :)
ReplyDeleteAll that to say I don't have any guilt or horror stories to tell over healing, Divorce and Remarriage and Tell the brethren they must do this or that stupid thing if indeed it struck me as stupid. And yes...my counselor after a rather extensive test informed the test told him that I had tendencies to not obey the rules I disagreed with. I asked him what was his point and what did he do and he looked at me funny.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that Armstrongism made a god out of law, any law, and especially their laws. They had no idea of the difference between mala in se laws and mala prohibita (largely arbitrary) laws. I can't even begin to describe the angst this caused in our home, while growing up. Manual for a power mower says not to use the mower backing up. Parent watches out the window, and yells about backing it up 1" while maneuvering it around shrubs. And, yes, sadly it escallated. But, they were just imitating and transferring what HWA had laid on them. And, this hasn't changed in the splinters. Screw 'em.
DeleteBB
As a former member of PCG, I use to lap this all up. I remember we could not wait at church for all the new revelation from that prophet and we were told if at all possible not to miss any of the sermons. But after years of none of Flurry speculative prophecies coming to fruition. Here are a few:
ReplyDeleteHWA auditorium is beginning of raising the ruins and become a light to all the world. So we all gave extra money for this to build it.
Raising the ruins will become a best selller and expose Satan in God's church for the world to see. Oh yes and wake up the laodiceans bringing some back to the truth. So again they asked all members to buy the book and make it a best seller. In our congregation of 40 we bought a few boxes to give to family members and in libraries. At full price by the way.
Then came finding the tombs of kings and the throne chair from something Nash read and linked to Flurry. So they asked us for money for the work in Jerusalem. We all gave money and that fizzled.
Then it was a verse Flurry read wich he speculated was about finding the ark of the covenant in Ireland. This justified needing money to buy first the hwa place which fizzled out then Edstone so the church was close by when they got the ark oh and the stone of destiny. Flurry said God would work miracles to get it. And I remember all of us being so excited. Then he speculated finding Noah's ark and Shane Granger went to Turkey to make contacts.
But for myself, the nail started piercing the coffin in 2016 when he started about a plane to visit dignitaries like HWA did. It was spoken of casually in previous years when the chuch realised they had an airstrip at Edmond HQ. And of course due to his age, he could not use public airlines as too tiring. Well, what about the 51% plus members who are in his age bracket and have to fly to the feasts each year on their fixed incomes. Then he speculated after Trump won that he had mention before he thought he would win cause he would now fulfill the Jeroboam prophecy not Obama who was only the Political Antiochus. And the end-time Joshua and Amaziah JTjr would warn him about PCG leading to the PCG escape to first Jerusalem then Petra due to being kicked out. And finally January came and he told the whole church to have a fast and announced the stone of destiny was HWA prayer rock and he was the rightful heir to the throne as he was not only a descendant physically but also the rightful descendant spiritually as the royal family with all their worldliness have been removed, and that the church would buy a plane and asked for pledges.
Lokking back on it though and how suckered in I was, it was not being told to cut off family members that did it for me, nor was it learning about someone I knew committing suicide and being told it was a heart attack. Those things, sadly, were secondary in my mind. How sad and pathetic was I? I just shake my head in disgust at myself.
Anon 2:59 AM, don't blame yourself!
ReplyDeleteJames 4:5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
There is a lot of lust and Envy involved with Gerald Flurry and other leaders as well...fit things for Self.
Paul was affected in a similar way:
Romans 7:17-21 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
Join the club! Don't feel like you are are alone in this. Most of us have been caught up in similar things to one degree or another with the leaders of these organizations and associations over the years.
These leaders act like the prophets of Baal.
Jesus Christ had a description of some of these leaders too:
Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
These leaders want you to grow and overcome and be like them and they aren't even doing it!
These leaders are like thieves and robbers and want you to earn your salvation by works of self, because they don't really believe in grace at all.
Because these leaders are driven by another spirit they preach another Jesus and another gospel.
Their gospel is that you need to do your part and maybe just maybe you will squeak into the kingdom of God. Again they are like thieves and robbers.
My question might be: when are these leaders going to start doing their part?
It is obvious that in one thing after another their way is the get way!
Time will tell!...
John
What so you mean John with "dont blamw yourself".
ReplyDeleteLet it be publicly known that in case any more of my kin will commit suicide while under the spell of that cult I will personally come, judge, hold accountable and judge and perhaps sentence if any ministers are involved.
I will hold them accountable.
Nck
A real man is who he is as he is the way he is without all the shallow input of the Shoulders and Musters. A real man lives his life from the inside out not the outside demands of others for him in. A real man is able to say to others, "Don't tell me how to think, ...."
ReplyDeleteWow man, that sounds just like MGTOW--Men Going Their Own Way. A group of men on the internet who are sick of being told what to do and how to behave. They are sick of feminists telling them what to do, the media telling them how to behave, and political correctness (i.e. a bunch of lying manipulators) telling them what to think. MGTOW have turned their backs on Western women and modern society. They are sick of dying in wars for the rich who then tell them to "man up" and go die for your country (which really means die for the rich). They are sick of being treated like crap just for being men.
nck August 20, 2017 at 12:23 PM said...
ReplyDelete"...What so you mean John with "dont blamw yourself".
Let it be publicly known that in case any more of my kin will commit suicide while under the spell of that cult I will personally come, judge, hold accountable and judge and perhaps sentence if any ministers are involved.
I will hold them accountable..."
nck, the verses were clear enough with why I wrote what I wrote.
Jesus Christ blasted out the Pharisees in Matthew 23; however, He did not blame them and hold them accountable. Yes, there was accountability and it will be taken care of later in time, which will tell.
Jesus mouthed: "That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
:36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation."
The Pharisees did not shed Abel's blood or Zacharias' blood, but a generation will be held accountable. Those Pharisees did not exist in Abel/Zacharias' day!
"This generation," 1 generation of Satan and his angels, the same vile, evil, generation that still exists today. They have lived a long time, but they don't have eternal life.
You may not believe that now, but time will tell.
Suicide is horrible. I know of some who have committed suicide. Why did your kin do it? You don't need to answer that question. Your kin will live again.
And yes, the principalities (Eph 6:12) can cause human beings to commit suicide along with all sorts of other evils (Romans 1:29-31; Galatians 5:19-21).
There was a case recently when some young girl was found guilty of causing the suicide of another person, somehow, via text messages, etc. She is being held accountable to some degree. Although Satan is this world's present evil god, humans still strive to impose laws upon one another in strive to enforce them. It's a lot of evil, ungodliness, godlessness, sin(s), etc. among us.
We will have sin within our lives, and the wages for those sins? Death.
None of us will escape death. We think those committing suicide died.....died too soon! It causes sorrow and pain for others, while those individuals "sleep."
Be that as it may, but they will live again. Whatever our opinions on this, that spirit of James 4:5 is "alive and well" within each of us...so is sin that Paul spoke of.
I can't change that; can you?
We can turn a blind eye to it, but life goes on...and I am glad that it won't continue on forever as it is today.
And time will tell...
John
Hey John,
ReplyDeleteThanks!
I deleted a long answer.
To summarize. I know of hush ups. In the unlikely case a hush up would involve my kin I would settle any score in this life.
The most extreme cult leaders must realize that non christian folk outside are monitoring and no hush ups go unnoted even if cases may not end up on public forums and they may have implemented "succesful" closed door policies or tape destroying programs.
Nck