Living Church of God is making the claim that they have a better understanding of prophecy than any other Church of God out there. Given how horrendous the track record of the entire COG movement has been in regards to prophecy, it amazes me that LCG has not learned its lesson in keeping their mouths shut about it. Rod Meredith has uttered as many if not more failed prophecies than Herbert Armstrong ever did.
Watch Bible Prophecy!
Many today recognize the world is heading down a dangerous road politically, morally and militarily. While the news media report on events and trends, reporters and commentators do not understand the real significance of what they see or where these events are leading. This is why Jesus told His disciples to stay alert and watch for the fulfillment of specific prophecies that will mark the approaching end of this age (Matthew 24). Jesus also warned in the parable of the ten virgins that many will be caught napping and unprepared by the surge of events that will precede His return to this earth (Matthew 25:1-13). God has given His Church a “more sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19, KJV) so His Church can warn the Israelite nations and the world about the real significance of both current and impending world events (Ezekiel 3 and 33). However, misguided teachers and preachers discount the importance of Bible prophecy and instead prefer to entertain and make people feel good. As we see world events building to a prophetic crescendo, let’s make sure we are building a closer relationship with God and that we are learning to live by every word of God—as we continue to watch world events and pay attention to Bible prophecy.Have a profitable Sabbath,Douglas S. Winnail
30 comments:
The prophecy problem is systemic throughout all of the branches of the Armstrong tree. If you use HWA's basic mold you start with error. Decades of "delayed prophecy" have demonstrated that it's all down hill from that point on. Most of these groups tweak the timeline, the leaders find some questionable basis for inserting themselves into scripture, and then they go about lifting bits and pieces from the news that support the HWA mold, and dose the membership with fear, while their message has a statistically negligible effect on the general population. There is no group that has broken from the pack to become a runaway success.
Nobody knows jack about prophecy. Anybody who says they do is a damned liar. It's better off minimized or left alone. If fulfillment is the standard by which we judge, HWA's prophecy hook didn't work. It diminished rather than enhancing the lives of his followers.
BB
As a member of the Global Church of God, I took sermon notes in which Rod Meredith talked of things that would happen "in the next five to fifteen years."
Fifteen years after I took those notes, those things had not yet happened. I left the Living Church of God and haven't looked back.
Prophecy is ambiguous and is open to any & all interpretations. Even in my sermons I let everyone know that bible prophecy can be seen from many different view points.
The best way to insure “a more sure word of prophecy” is to write it after the fact like the Book of Daniel. Make it seem like you are writing in the 6th century BCE when in fact you are writing in the Second Century when everything you predicted had already happened...well accept Chapter 12 where you kinda mush around in generic terms because you don’t actually know how it’s all really going to go.
While Daniel was written to encourage the Maccabean Jews to hang in their until Rome was busted and failed.....Revelation was written as a take off on Daniel to encourage Jewish Christians to hang in their until Rome was busted...and also failed.
It’s kinda of a cool way of writing if you don’t mind being mistaken.
Humans can’t really know the future and if there was a set future to know then we are of all clones and bots most miserable....
Bible prophecy is open to many interpretations.
Yep, Doug tells his members to live by every word of God. Meanwhile his ministers put themselves above the law by lording it over the sheep via verbal bashings and tearing members down.
One standard for me, another for thee.
Indeed it is, Private! That's because we only get a book, our minds, five senses, and a collection of people who want to interpret and teach. The problem is that since everybody is getting prophecy wrong, it's better to leave it alone, and to counsel people to concentrate on being on the side of good, to live their lives, and to let the future unfold as it will.
It is ridiculous for people to claim to know prophecy, to assert that they are the gatekeepers, and to teach that God is going to install their belief system as His govenment on earth for all eternity, with their followers occupying all of the most desirable positions. I can understand why people would want to believe this, but look at how it has co-opted and ruined peoples' lives, isolated them from most other humans, and stolen and wasted any of the blessings they believe they have experienced as a result of following self-proclaimed prophets, apostles, and teachers.
Prophecy is the cat of 9 tails that has been used to manipulate and induce compliance.
BB
Armstrongites and ex-Armstrongites have tunnel vision when it comes to the word prophecy. They always interpret it to mean "prediction of the future". Prophecy can also mean inspired speaking of any sort. It might be a statement of praise concerning God.
If we presume that in this context it does mean predictive vision, then Armstrongism as failed mightly on this account. And those in association with these fellowships might reconsider if their purposes and goals really have alignment with the words of Christ.
J. Cafourek poster above- FYI
In case you did not know, John Cafourek recently died...
https://www.ucg.org/user/john-cafourek
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/by/cafourek/john
The only sure word we have is from scripture, that not even Christ knows the day or the hour, but we can speculate on the "season". But don't hold your breath on that one.
Fear religion, used by the Armstrongs and now many micro-splinter groups, takes away whatever "new truth" that COGs may have.
3:12, smartest move you could have made. I made it way back in 1975. No regrets.
@ Connie, you beat me to it; I was just about to say the same thing!
Time to get a new handle, 5:04 am.
3:12, smartest move you could have made. I made it way back in 1975. No regrets.
Thank you for the good news. I hated that smf!
The bible is not a perfect book. It has parts missing from it. It has elements of myth, legend & Jewish folklore. Bible prophecy is nothing more than speculation.
One of the reasons Bob Thiel gives for leaving the LCG was a change in their interpretation of "falling away" (2 Thes 2:3), which they claimed would "set apart the LCG from others". Of course Bob claims the CCOG has the more sure word of prophecy.
Mythology has it's origin in truth.
How about that Prophecy is like an ancient policy paper that lies on a shelf.
The roads being predicted only come about when sufficient people, stakeholders and lobby groups start believing they are either necessary, possible and usefull.
The "prophets" crying the road will be built in 10 years are the speculators.
They know nothing about the timing and planning, but in a way keep the dream alive until critical mass, technological progress and financing make the prophecy of the road come true?
In that sense Da Vinci or Jules Verne were prophets, but before their ideas were actually possible.
Today AI and bio engineering will bestow "Godlike" qualities on man surpassing the idea of space travel. We did that with less technology than the average cell phone.
Theres more, but lets stick to this first.
One more example. I remember well the joking during sermons at the Feast about what tongue would be spoken in the millenium. Soon obsolete with google translate.
Nck
Just one more bedtime story.
As a small kid used to interrogate my Armstrongite mummy on the feasability of the "entire" world being informed on Christs return on Olivet.
She explained to me that perhaps, somehow miraculously, Jesus would use ALL existing television networks and switch on the tv's in peoples homes.
It was my fervent hope that Jesus would postpone his return UNTIl we got color tv.
Today this funny lady is an avid liker of anything posted by her children and grandchildren on twitter.
I am pretty sure that in case Jesus woukd decide to return to her hometown I and 7 billion other people would know of this within 38 seconds.
I guess she was part of that critical mass bringing about change through a fervent desire.
Nck
I didnt get the impression that LCG was really sure of much, except the absolute power of their leadership in illogical circumstances. But I cant say I go perusing their literature at length.
There's a LCG apologist rancher named, "Cowboy Joe", and his LCG God has given his cows the power to give the "More Sure Word Turd" of prophecy when they poop.
Sadly and of course, "Joe" is a gun nut who has amassed firearms and ammunition, and is ready, willing and able to shoot any hungry pagan who might want a bite of of one of his hamburgers.
No COG organization has a "more sure word of prophecy". It has been nothing but a guessing game for many years. Calculated guesses about when the church would flee, or when Christ will return have flopped many times. Predictions about who "The Beast" power leader is, or which nations would represent the so-called "Holy Roman Empire" have been a bust!
Physical and financial storms have come and gone, and yet this old world still goes on.
When prophesies are not based upon the Bible, and come out of the mind of man well, anything is possible. Puny man can't get it into their heads, that things are on God's timetable. No man or work (that he does in God's name really matters). The secret things belong to God.
Joe is UCG, not LCG. And, he didn't necessarily go along with the whole UCG package as I recall. He did do a whole bunch of independent thinking.
In an apocalyptic scenario, it's not the onesy-twosie neighbors looking for a burger that you'd probably need to defend your family against. It would more likely be an unknown and crazed band of itinerant marauders that would surely overrun your land and your family before moving along, leaving your bleeding corpses in their wake. It's packs of people who have been reduced by the circumstances to zombies, not at all like the WCG version where you are the only one in your neighborhood who is being blessed with food and water, with your neighbors who have always hated you anyway hitting you up for a sandwich.
If you don't think you should defend yourself and your family against crazed marauders, you are just plain crazy. Go out and pick up on one of Lynyrd Skynyrd's latest album "God and Guns"!
BB
Cowboy Joe? Theres a name from the past.
As I recall, they recast falling away as "joining the American Protestant political movement", right? Instead of the old WCG "the Catholics are gonna make peace with errybody and then kill us"? Or was that a different contentious point he had with them?
Everyone is born, lives for a while, and then dies.
Some people grow up to become liars and thieves, who claim to be prophets, and who demand other people's money.
Other people grow up to be the suckers who listen to the liars and thieves who claim to be prophets, and who demand their money.
LCG might indeed have a "more sure" word of prophecy. But "more sure" than who? Who is the competition? Who has the "most sure"? That's what I wanna know. And would even that be saying anything? Would that manage to elevate the bar off the ground at all? I have a hunch that the most surest word of prophecy ever in the whole wide world don't amount to even so much as a single bean, let alone a hill of 'em.
"We're very highly educated. We know words of prophecy. We have the best words of prophecy."
Funny that LCG fancies themselves as prophets but they are blind to their own pending demise.
I have a prophecy for Gerald Weston:
Clean up the corruption and the liars within the ministry and especially at Charlotte headquarters or WE WILL START LEAVING THE CHURCH IN DROVES.
Anon 5:45 AM, your prophecy has failed, because the brethren have ALREADY STARTED leaving in droves.
Don't forget that the structure of a tithe-supported church allows for one especially damaging kind of "leaving." Many families who have children in the LCG cult, or who have no friends outside of LCG, choose to "leave" mentally and financially, even while showing up for Sabbath services and social activities just to keep up their comfortable relationships. If the ministry kicks people out for non-tithing, this will scare off formerly loyal LCG members who will not only lose friends but see firsthand the intrusive control HQ wants to have over individual member lives. So, these non-tithers will use up their share of LCG resources without contributing toward the LCG budget, and put LCG into further financial difficulty.
Also, to stay in LCG today, you need to believe that RCM could have been the new leader of the Church even though HWA selected someone else. So, if you believe that RCM's leadership was legitimate, you must also believe that there can be another new leader other than Gerald Weston.
"Oh, but JWT changed doctrine away from what HWA taught, so that's a reason to go with RCM," some will say. Well, an honest observer will admit that RCM has also changed doctrine away from what HWA taught, and that there are other groups like COGWA that teach far fewer changes than RCM/LCG.
This puts Weston in a bind. If he keeps the changed doctrines, or changes more, he will lose more members to groups like COGWA. However, if he undoes any of RCM's changes, this will undercut RCM's legitimacy. If RCM was wrong about doctrines, he might also have been wrong in selecting Weston.
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