Several people on XCG Facebook pages are telling stories of how they have attended Feast sites this year just to make parents and family members happy, or to meet up with friends for a day of fun after services. Every single one of them has been saying the same thing. Their comments also illustrate just how provincial the Church of God still is in 2017.
Everyone is stating that they heard the exact same sermons using the same scriptures that they had heard every single year during their time in the church. Not one of these speakers had an original theme to their sermons. It is the exact same thing published over and over in every COG magazine and article. The ministers preached the same canned sermon that they heard from Herbert Armstrong.
It is the same old mantra, "We are being trained to be kings and priests." "We will head to the place of final training as the chosen of God, highly from the entire population of the world." "The church will soon face persecution for our beliefs...will you be held worthy of God's protection."
One person mentioned how downtrodden the women at the Feast they visited looked. None of the sermons were geared towards women, other than being "helpmeet's" for their husbands and that they be submissive, quiet in church and good stewards of their households."
One person had this to say:
"Don't these people's brains rot after listening to the very same thing for decades?"For centuries Christians have lived their faith in ways that make it relevant to the time they live in. While they look forward to a kingdom to come, they work to make that kingdom present in the lives of those they touch around them. What better way to witness to those around you, instead of parked for four hours in some dank hotel ballroom listening to yet another incredibly boring sermon. The things that Jesus taught and said can never be said to be boring. Can you say that about the typical COG minister today?
61 comments:
Never attended a single Feast of Tabernacles while attending CGI or its offshoots. Couldn't afford it, even though the church leadership always insisted we should. No offers of help from the congregation, just looks of vague disgust. For a while, we were traveling to and from services in a car with bad brakes and actually lost the brakes on the highway one Sabbath with the kids in the car. Luckily, we weren't hurt. Nobody at church cared about that or the fact that our tires were bald.
I remember one guy who started attending who had longish hair and a beard. He was very poor. They got him a suit for church at a second hand shop and told him to get a haircut before he was baptized. The guy didn't need a suit. He needed money to pay the utilities.
I can't imagine anything more nightmarish than spending a week locked up in a hotel with a bunch of COG people listening to the same crap year after year and pretending it was the BEST FEAST EVER!
I left the church (WCG) when I turned 18 and left for college. It has been at least 25 years since I have been to a Feast site. I found out UCG was having one close by and decided to visit. The people I spoke to were friendly and welcoming. It was like deja vu! The same service format, the same "special music", the exact same sermon I heard 25 some years ago. I was bored out of my mind! People sat there taking copious notes, which I can guarantee 95% will NEVER look at again. The men were still in their suits with power ties and carrying those absurd briefcases, the women looked worn out and the kids just as rebellious as ever. Most seemed to make a quick exit out the door after the final hymn (which was one of those God awful Dwight Armstrong monstrosities) because a fun day had obviously been planned ahead of time. Some even went into the restrooms and changed clothes. It was the most depressing thing I had done in a long time. I had to go across the street to the pub and have a drink just to cleanses my mind!
There's a reason for the same sermons and no new input. It only becomes obvious after one leaves the church. Only then, after a sense of normality returns, do the victims realize the degree to which their minds and sense of normalcy has been twisted.
The bible does talk about submission. But it also teaches to 'obey God rather than man.' In the real world, obedience typically means defiance rather than submission. You'll never hear that from the power hungry Gestapo ministers.
You think it is bad for the members, what about the ministers? They have to give the same sermon over and over. How embarrassing as it shows that anything that they may have learnt over the year has not yet been approved for teaching.
They are as much slaves to the ignorance of the leadership, as are the members. What is the purpose of having or pretending to have, the Holy Spirit, for that also has to have approval. Folks, its all a scam. No one needs these ministers after you have leant the basics and have received the Holy Spirit.
To insist that you have to have a minister to teach you, is to deny Yahshua. You have created a mini-god by rejecting inspired teaching.
I never attended the feast of tabernacles because I never had enough 2nd tithes to go. Apparently anon 10:43 was in the same boat I was in.
Anon at 10:46
I took my aging mother to a Living Church of God site this year. I experienced much the same things you did, though because I had left LCG a couple years after Meredith started it, some people were less friendly to me. The sermons were the same things I grew up with. It was still the same format Jesus use in the synagogues of Israel: three Dwight hymns, a sad sermonette, another hymn, announcements and then some woman screeching special music, then the sermon which was an hour and half of butt-aching misery, and then another hymn with the final closing prayer sermonette. Why in the hell do these men feel they still need to say a closing prayer that goes on for well over 3 minutes? What I found interesting was how few young people were in attendance. LCG is dying a slow miserable death.
"No, brethren, really, why are we here?"
Worst "special music" I ever heard was a Dwight Armstrong hymn played on an accordion.
Yeah.
Let that little piece of hell sink in a little.
I don't see why people are complaining about the endless rehashing of sermons that are only as old as Gone With the Wind, while they don't mind other sermons in text form that have been rehashed 20 times as endlessly. It's the same thing but 20 times worse. Why aren't they complaining about the bible?
I remember in the Tupelo congregation a lady who apparently thought she could sing got up to sing a special song. The piano was grossly out of tune and the lady couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. I can STILL REMEMBER that "piece of hell" after all these years.
I remember sitting on those cold, metal chairs inside what can be described as a large metal shed with an ugly concrete floor at the feast site in Wisconsin Dells. I was so bored with the sermons that seemed to last an eternity. But I also felt very guilty that I was bored. After all, shouldn't we all feel excited and if we aren't maybe we are weak and are headed for the lake of fire. The fear and guilt is what kept me in the church and kept me to continue to keep these weird, and out-dated holydays. I think it is nothing but fear and guilt that keep many in the COG's. I think many fake being excited about the Feast of Tabernacles or just see it as a vacation. I am so glad that I left! I pitty those that are still locked that religious system.
Possible changes--
Have mobile STARBUCKS unit at every FOT Site with free drinks provided.
Turn services into game show formats with Bible Themes. Bible Wheel of Fortune, Bible Jeopardy, and Bible Family Feud.
Rate sermons with immediate online polling, and make it a sort of "American Idol" with speakers eliminated each day, and champion crowned on the Last Great Day.
Turn the "special music" into open mike Karaoke competitions, with applause meters.
Meals could be collective, and turned into cooking demonstrations or contests, or mass chili cookoff kind of affairs.
Have morning Pilates sessions, and after church have wine and cheese events.
Any other ideas?
Sweetblood777 wrote ...what about the ministers? They have to give the same sermon over and over.
It worked for Gerald Waterhouse.
For no particular reason, I've been passively listening to some of Bob Thiel's latest FOT sermons. I couldn't imagine taking notes as I did in my WCG days, as he seems to jump all over the place. I pity his audience.
One of the buzz phrases that leapt out several years ago when I read the complete works of Josephus was that in recounting the history of Israel for his Roman patrons, he lauded some of the good kings and priests, tacking on the phrase "a good and righteous man who made no innovations." Was this an indication of Jewish conservatism, a continuing tradition which is responsible for the stagnation of the ACOGs in a growing, changing world? I believe we could be on to something here!
I first became aware of the attitude of doting preservation of all things Armstrong while I was a young WCG teenager in high school. I had rolled up the PT to use as a flyswatter, and found myself being admonished to treat Mr. Armstrong's materials as if they were rare and priceless heirlooms or archives, and I was their curator.
BB
Best Feast Ever ... Best Feast Ever ... Best Feast Ever!
The same sermons are given year after year because they are good for you. They are good for your rotten, sinful, depraved soul which only wants the carnel things in life. They are good for you because they remind you of the world to come, which will be here when it gets here. Repetition is a good thing. Repetition is a good thing. Repetition is a good thing because it is only by repeating spiritual concepts that they sink into your sick mind and take root and grow. Only then will you produce fruit. Only then will you be pruned with certain things cut off so that you may grow good fruit which may go bad and have to be cut off again but hey that's the way it goes. That's why you hear the same sermons and that's why they are good for you. If you let yourself develop a root of bitterness that bitterness will grow until you are all bitter butter, and then you will have to be pruned with fire, with things burned off instead of cut off. Believe me, you don't want that. You want things cut off instead of burned off. So go to the feast and listen to the same sermons. Take lots of notes and read them often. Be better, not bitter.
Hmm. I think I read this same idea in The Aquariums of Pyongyang.
"Don't these people's brains rot after listening to the very same thing for decades?" No, because they don't take them with.
I believe in keeping the feast, but I don't believe in being bored out of my gourd. I don't learn anything that way. Most elders have little to capture an audience's imagination. Or if they do, they have never learned how to clothe it attractively. And the funny thing is that it isn't really that hard to do.
5.52 PM
'Repetition is a good thing' only if the truth is told. But the church teaches lies rather than the truth. One example is the 'obey, yield, surrender, submit' mantra. This is slavery to the Ayatollah ministers rather than worshipping and following Christ. Herb said 'government is everything.' Ronald Reagan said that government is the problem rather than the solution. Under the fig leaf guise of 'administering Gods government,' the Mafia ministers have stolen church members lives.
Repetition is used to keep members mentally sedated, while the ministers, like schoolyard bullies, run riot.
"The same sermons are given year after year because they are good for you. They are good for your rotten, sinful, depraved soul which only wants the carnal things in life. "
That s the biggest load of bullshit I have heard in a while. Typical Armstrongite cult think. It kept being repeated to us because we had idiot men who were unqualified to preach and had no concept or understanding of Jesus. The law was and still is their task master. The law brings death and the Churches of God are spiritually dead. So repeat your shit all you want. Jesus is not part of it so it is worthless and falls on deaf ears.
"LCG is dying a slow miserable death."
All the COGs are on the same path. Some of those ministers who are near retirement better be shaking in their boots because the financial well is soon going to go dry. That illusion of the "work" taking off is just that, an illusion. That ship sailed in the mid-twentieth century, and since then, it's slowly begun to sink. The little life boats that make up all those splinters aren't going to weather very many big waves.
Allen C. Dexter
Anon10:10PM wrote:
"The same sermons are given year after year because they are good for you. They are good for your rotten, sinful, depraved soul which only wants the carnal things in life. "
That s the biggest load of bullshit I have heard in a while. Typical Armstrongite cult think. It kept being repeated to us because we had idiot men who were unqualified to preach and had no concept or understanding of Jesus. The law was and still is their task master. The law brings death and the Churches of God are spiritually dead. So repeat your shit all you want. Jesus is not part of it so it is worthless and falls on deaf ears.
MY COMMENT: Hear hear!
This year is the bestest best feast I've ever had.
That was so hypnotic. Just like the fake preacher who went around saying "the love of money is the root of all evil give me your filthy money".
No matter what happens amongst the Armstrong-observant, they've been programmed to respond with cliches. Best feast ever. Laodicean. Not much time left. Events are really picking up.
Herbie immunized his dumb sheep with clever Madison Avenue type one liners for all occasions. Somehow, most never get past the cliches.
BB
so its alright to keep a holiday like christmass year after year, or halloween, but when people keep a holy day that is actually Commanded to be kept in the Word of God you people have a problem with this? well last i checked the devil also has a problem with this, so go figure...
Anon 8:17 AM wrote:
when people keep a holy day that is actually Commanded to be kept in the Word of God
ACOG members seem oblivious to the fact that they do not keep the biblical feasts of Sukkot or Shemini Atzeret. Yes, they say they keep those days, but their "saying" is no different from Protestants who "say" that they keep the Sabbath on Sunday. Any ACOG member who investigates what Jesus did historically in keeping those Holy Days will have to conclude that today's ACOG members are doing things that God would not even begin to recognize as "keeping" those biblical Holy Days. Sadly, because Herbert W. Armstrong invented his own way of "keeping" those days, his modern followers prefer to follow the traditions of that man than to follow the actual example (or teachings) of Jesus Christ.
The New Covenant does not command any of the holidays. That is a fact and is easily researched. It is time to stop swallowing the legalistic lies of your deceived cult leaders and learn to follow Jesus instead of loving Moses more. It is no more commanded for New Covenant Christians than the Sabbath was a command to anyone prior to Moses. All of the holy days were specific commands for a specific people to help create their identity from the rest of the world around them. Christians do not need the laws of Moses to remind them of God and who they are, that is what Jesus did and is our direct conduit to God, not some tablets or codex.
If I am understanding correctly, it's the tepid and rather nonsensical manner in which it's kept that amuses most commenters. But hey, have a moment if ya like.
My brother wanted me to join him in Schluchsee, Germany for the feast with UCG this year so that we could do touring of Germany and Europe. I attended the first "holy" day service with him. Never in my life have I heard such BOOOOOOOOOORING speakers. Everyone that made the comments above about the words never changing are so correct. It was like I was sitting in a 1980's service. If there was ever "hell on earth" it was there that day! It certainly was not a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. Even my brother, who defends UCG in everything, thought it was boring.
Careful about giving Moses a bad rap, he didn't make the stuff up - one of the most repeated phrases in the Bible is And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, tell the Children of Israel... There were warnings about speaking against Moses, and Jesus said if you don't believe Moses, you wouldn't believe Him.
Here is my take on LIving Church of God in Kimberley, BC. It has been at least 10 years since I have attended a Feast with my family. When I left for college I stopped attending services. There was no spiritual nourishment happening for me so why waste my Saturdays being bored out of my mind!. My family wanted all of us to gather together as a family and spend time together. That part was great, but I was shocked at how bad the speaking was. Plus, I forgot how stuck up and self-righteous LCG members could be towards anyone who had left the "flock." I attended 1 1/2 services with them. I ended up walking out in the middle of one of the sermons. As the chosen people of God, I found nothing that certified that they were. I cannot imagine spending time in Petra listening to these people preach and watch as they treat everyone so horribly. Thank God I am free from all of this. Never again.
Several years ago I had occasion to take some people to their LCG feast site, and what you wrote SO resonates with my experience.
And by the way, I seldom have had "the best feast ever." That one happened years ago. One thing I learned long ago is that the enjoyability of a feast was usually a function of the attitude I had.
The BEST FEAST EVER is the ones you skipped.
If you have been watching the mainstream media all your life, like Gerald Flurry has, you are no longer able to think. Your brain has been conditioned by associative conditioning. i.e. they just keep repeating the same lies and innuendo over and over until people believe it. That's why most Americans think Iran is developing nuclear weapons even though the International Atomic Energy Agency has been inspecting Iran for 10-15 years and declared them free of any atomic weapons development program. Yet retards like Gerald believe Iran is "The King of The South" and a grave threat to the West. Flurry is an idiot because he watches the idiot box. Period. Garbage in, garbage out. Don't let Flurry and his brain-dead media dump their sewage into your head.
Hoss’ comment was probably the best that I have read on this site.
Mic 4:2b and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
It seems to me rather contradictory to ague that under the Covenant with Israel the Church, with Christ’s spirit, that the law and the feasts are not required to be kept; when under the Renewed Covenant with Israel the Kingdom the law and the feasts are to be kept.
Especially so in that Paul argues that he a minister of the new covenant:
2Co 3:6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
2Co 3:3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
and that those who walk after the Spirit fulfil the righteousness of the law:
Ro 8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Paul seems to be in accord with Ezekiel and Jeremiah, or better with God:
Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Eze 36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (AV).
Jer 31:33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
My impression is that God’s spirit (absolute sense)/Christ’s spirit (dynamic sense) causes you to want to keep the law, which includes the feasts, for both Israel the Church and Israel the Kingdom.
In the Ezekielian Torah, for the Millennium, the “festivals, the New Moons and the Sabbaths” will be kept:
Eze 45:17 It will be the duty of the prince to provide the burnt offerings, grain offerings and drink offerings at the festivals, the New Moons and the Sabbaths - at all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel. He will provide the sin offerings, grain offerings, burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to make atonement for the house of Israel. NIV).
Note: “The majority of dispensationalists have argued that the sacrifices are memorials to the sacrifice of Christ, with no atoning character. However, the idea that these are memorial sacrifices is no where apparent in Ezekiel, and it is specifically claimed by Ezekiel that these offerings will make atonement (45:15, 17, 20)” (Ian M. Duguid, Ezekiel, NIVAC, p.521).
well, i guess i can appreciate how they would think themselves superior to those what keep the Commands of God; after all satans whole rebellion is rooted in a superiority complex over his fellows, and his m.o. is basically to scoff and humiliate them for being obedient...
perhaps you would prefer we keep the holidays of caesar instead?
the new covenant does not dis command the Holy Days either, and there would be no reason to re command any of the Holy Days to be kept because Christ, being jewish, was among jews, so keeping the Holy Days and the Law was a given...
in fact there is evidence that Christ was even born on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles...
and there is certainly no evidence that He Commanded us to keep any of the roman catholic invented holidays...
and regarding the old versus new Covenant: only those who are led by the Spirit of God are under the New Covenant (Galatians 5:18)...
Theology doesn't go over well on a gossip website. By the way, according to anthropologist Yuval Harare, even chimps gossip. It's a safety thing to be able to know whether you can trust a chimp you don't know.
Somehow, I don't think you read what I was trying to tell you, since you somehow switched that track into reductio ad absurdum.
lol, you wish...i have been following this page for nearly two decades and you people have all been singing the same sad song, predicting, longing for the demise of the cogers...aint happened yet, has it???
yep, typical: getting personal, making insults while making absolutely no sense...something about the internet that makes people feel free to behave in a way that suggests their underlying character was formed in an environment void of discipline...
The ignorant fool at 9:55 said:
"i have been following this page for nearly two decades and you people have all been singing the same sad song, predicting, longing for the demise of the cogers...aint happened yet, has it???"
Well that's pretty nifty, especially considering I never started this blog till September of 2010. Two decades....So tell us another lie.
Ever hear of demise by attrition? It's happening. Just hasn't reached zero quite yet.
BB
Some COGlodyte at 8:07 PM wrote:
perhaps you would prefer we keep the holidays of caesar instead?
Well, Jesus Christ did tell us to render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's. That would include his holidays, wouldn't it?
When Amos condemned the nations surround Israel, he never condemned them for not keeping the Law of Moses (Sabbath, Holy Days, dietary laws, etc). The early church didn't keep the Law of Moses. Why? Because, as was quoted in an earlier comment, God spoke to MOSES and said, tell the Israelites to obey these laws. He didn't say, "Tell the WORLD." No one before Moses kept these laws and no one other than the Israelites were required to keep them. Am I missing something here?
Yep, typical: dodging the topic entirely.
Best Feast Over!
Steve D: Paul wrote in Romans that Gentile Christians are grafted in to Israel. But, Paul's words are easy to twist.
John 10:22 seems to indicate that Jesus was present and accounted for at the temple for Hannukah. There's a certain dichotomy related to this amongst the ACOGs, however. We say that Jesus and the disciples were at Temple on the sabbath and holydays to witness to the Jews as opposed to actually observing these days. They say it's proof of observance. So when we show that Jesus was at temple for Hannukah, it's possible He was just there to witness to the Jews. Either way Armstrongites end up being wrong.
BB
Connie we know you are a fake account used likely by a ucg member or minister. Your criticisms now ring hollow now that you have been found out.
I'd recommend you create a new fake account and attempt to get a new following from scratch. Your photo switcheroo was enlightening to your character... A mask of your true intentions.
We know that COGs are fast and loose with "proofs". My favorite sparring partner, Bob Thiel, recently quoted the voyage had already become dangerous because it was after the Fast [Acts 27:9] as a proof that Paul observed Atonement. I'm not saying he didn't, but that verse alone is insufficient as a proof.
Luke mentions a Sabbath Day's journey, but I don't think WCG considered it important. As for Hannukah, the WCG excused it as a Jewish national holiday, and, Bob Thiel (again) seemed to question whether Jesus really observed it...
well, i stand corrected: i shouldve said blogs like this...and true to form, people of ur mindset devolve into name calling, deflection, and refusal to address the point; it makes u feel superior, dont it? it also is yet another sign that there is little merit in ur pov, and makes u appear low class and base...
straight out the trump playbook, eh?
great way to represent ur kind...
why do th muslims keep similar dietary Laws to th jews? why did cain and able sacrifice unto the Lord? why did Isaiah say God would one day Choose priests from among the gentiles? why were the strangers among the children of israel Commanded to keep the Law...
Anon @ 12:53 Sorry if you did not like the snarky comment. People like you are a dime a dozen on all of the COG sites. You hit and run and never carry on any conversation and always remain anonymous. Points are never proven but dogmatic statements from the past are used as proof. It always makes the hit and run specialists feel smug and superior...right? Due to that mindset most find POV's from the hit and run crowd tend to have little merit.
The Lake Texoma UCG site had a refreshing change this year.
"Men's Challenge" meetings were held most mornings at 7:00 a.m., well before the morning service. The meetings went through a "manhood" video series by the mainstream Christian ministry known for "Family Life Today" on radio.
It was personal, probing and a bit emotional at times. But it was good, deeply spiritual stuff - and certainly was different from the usual Feast sermons.
Sounds interesting @3:53! Hope it is a sign of a new direction, but will wait and see.
well, for starters, i happen to enjoy ur pg at times; having said that: i have been commenting on anti and pro cog pgs for 20 years, init not anon; "people like you" have sent me insults, and even threats, yes, even cogers; and when posted on the lcg fb page, i was banned, and all my comments erased...in contrast to ur pg, i might add...
and frankly when a posters points are ignored, and the respondents instead start calling names, then what do you expect from me?
so i do post anon, and i avoid conversation because in this day and age civil discord is greatly diminished...
- Because the Arab Muslims believed that the Jews had once worshipped God in the correct way but had since corrupted their worship and understanding beyond redemption. By the time the religion was founded, Sinai was millenia past.
- Assuming this isn't the biblical writer projecting a simplified practice from his day back into the story, what of it? Sacrifices have been offered to deities all over the world for various reasons, and the account says very little overall.
- What of it? Catholic and Orthodox priests still exist today, along with some other subsets'. You don't need Torah to have priests.
- A little barbaric, wasn't it? Doesn't matter anyway. Once Jesus Christ was sacrificed, circumcision profited them nothing. If all the circumcision arguments weren't explicitly recorded in the NT, would you be sitting here telling us "Unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses, you cannot be saved"?
it is Written, only if you are led by the Holy Spirit are you not under the Law; and those who are not led by the Holy Spirit are manifest by their works of the flesh...
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