And church members think this is normal.
One of the first things I did when leaving Armstrongism was to get a new Bible with no wide margins and was not a Moffitt, Scofield, Orginal King James or had a dispensational bent.
With most of the markings that the church instructed members to use in the Bible, it was little more than highlighting proof texts to confirm preconceived notions as to what certain scriptures were supposed to mean.
One of the first things I did when leaving Armstrongism was to get a new Bible with no wide margins and was not a Moffitt, Scofield, Orginal King James or had a dispensational bent.
With most of the markings that the church instructed members to use in the Bible, it was little more than highlighting proof texts to confirm preconceived notions as to what certain scriptures were supposed to mean.
Picture ht: SHT
17 comments:
When I stopped attending services, I shunned the NT for many years, sticking with the OT. The reason was to be able to come back to it, and see it through my own eyes. Herbs church imprisoned its members minds with their self serving interpretations.
I did the same thing. I threw out my large print wide margin bible and all WCG literature. From now on I will read and study on my own.
Jim-AZ
Holy crap, Richard Ames is still alive??? That guy baptized me back when I was in Radio Church of God. I haven't even heard about the guy since leaving the Church in spring of 1967. I thought Armstrong's church died out ages ago.
Ive seen worse. Some people use multiple colors , and have their Bible so brightly colored that it looks like the "Rainbow Flag" for the LGBT movement!
You know, I still have two - one that belonged to my father in WCG, and one that was mine. It would be interesting to go through them and record all the highlighted verses, just to compare with others from WCG, see if the same few verses show up all the time. :)
4:49 PM Ames left WCG with his brother-in-law Rod Meredith when Meredith bamboozled Global Church of God and took all of their money, essentially bankrupting Raymond McNair. Ames is now Living Church of God face on their telecast. Still boring as hell, like he was in WCG. Now he has a life of financial secuirity because he has always sucked up to the big boys in order to keep his salary intact. He has always been a weak man, always letting others do the dirty work so he could walk in without any effort. The only good thing about Ames is that he soundly rejected Bob Thiel as a prophet and publicly mocked him.
4:39 -
Please tell me your personal impressions/points about Ames in your perspective
-SHT
Let's see what I can recall:
1. Multiple Colors, yes. I don't remember which were for what. I know there was a method to the system. Yellow/Orange/Red were really common - a few green ones too. I think green were for the tithing support scriptures, but I can't be sure.
2. Tabs. Some people put tabs in certain areas for holy days, Sabbath, etc...
3. Red letter editions I think were quite popular among the brethren - just harder to "red" highlight ;).
4. Bibles were really common Feast gifts, especially the ones where your name was imprinted in gold leaf letters. Gilded bibles with the leaf on the edges were really popular too.
5. The bigger the bible, the holier art thou. Or so some thought.
6. The markings went beyond the bible to other church literature which were also rainbowed out.
The funniest thing that ever happened with Bibles in our family was that my brother accidentally left his Bible under a chair in our rented meeting hall after church one sabbath. Little did we know that that Saturday evening, a magician had rented “our” sabbath hall, and was putting on a show.
Not knowing about our church, the magician had assumed that someone attending his show was into “Bible Magic”, and wanted to discuss this privately with my brother, and in greater detail. He actually phoned us, because my brother had dutifully filled out the owner page in his Bible, including his name, our address, and phone number. Happily, this Bible was returned to us through our local minister, whom our family felt was more experienced in dealing with a “magus”. Couldn’t let a young inexperienced teenager interact with someone suspected of being demon-possessed!
Ames left WCG with his brother-in-law Rod Meredith when Meredith bamboozled Global Church of God and took all of their money, essentially bankrupting Raymond McNair.
Not exactly. Meredith left WCG at the end of 1992; Ames didn't leave until October of 1996. I'm sure Meredith has put him in some tough positions, beginning with the abandonment of Global in Nov 1998, yet I have not known him to be anything other than sincere and straightforward. I also believe him to be the best speaker in LCG. And he was the best TV presenter, even in WCG. To his credit, he realized he would probably be too old by the time Meredith died, so he declined the opportunity to lead LCG. I'd like to think that had he known Meredith would turn into a dictator, he might have gone elsewhere, but that's probably wishful thinking.
OK, someone come back and tell me the other side of Ames.
I too have seen far worse marked bibles than the bible in the photo above.
I remember thinking how the marking obscured seeing what the actual scripture said.
In bygone days it was the done thing to brag about how your bible was filled up with markings and how you needed to buy a new one.
At AC there were some students who used these pens, I think they were called Rapideograph or something like that. They were the type of pens used by draftsmen, very fine point. I also got rid of my wide margin, leather bound, KJV Bible. I didn't want to give it to a charity because of all of the writing in it that might mislead someone, so I threw it in the trash. I felt a bit guilty doing so, like throwing an American flag in the trash, or Grandma's cremation ashes (just kidding). I got an NIV study Bible and have used it ever since.
Ames was my favorite presenter on the World Tomorrow too...he had a way of making it very clear.
years later, watching Meredith on his tv show, I wondered why Ames would be involved with this guy, he was the opposite of Ames, at least as far as presentation....Ames came across as a loving grandfather type, Meredith sounded so harsh, did not exude anything close to love.
I often liken Ames to a "babyface" in the pro wrestling of the day. He could generate sympathy when he used the Big Frowny Face.
Nah, I had big Dick Ames for speech class in Pasadena, he was one of the many 'leaders' who never allowed themselves the privilege of thinking for himself - he was an Armstrong robot. He took me on a local church trip one time and since I was from England he asked me whom I thought had the 'perfect expression of the English language?" Naturally I thought it would be someone from the UK...right? Perhaps her Majesty the Queen? Nope, he said "Mr. Armstrong" has the perfect spoken English, the Queen had a spoken English corrupted by her upper class in-breeding." Ah, of course, why didn't I know that the answer to any question about "Who is best..." would always be Herbie? Ames is just another windbag who has a brain but he checked it at the door before entering WCG.
Lol! HWAs jowl-shaking furies were perfect English??
HWA was no grammarian! His all-time classic in just about every apocalyptic piece that he authored was that mankind was now capable of “blasting himself from off the face of the earth” unless God would intervene. He used two countering prepositions, “from”, and “off”, giving his statement a completely unintended meaning. “From” would have been the most appropriate choice, and totally sufficient. “From off” indicates that the event would not even take place on our planet. It is somewhat akin to the double negative, as with Mick Jagger’s “I can’t get no satisfaction”.
He also had a problem with “empirical”. He stated that he had coined a phrase “the empirical self” to describe mankind’s innate propensity to build empires for himself. Based on his takes on science, he was obviously unfamiliar with empirical evidence.
The concept of perfect English is confined to a snapshot in time, as it would be for any living language. Living languages grow in relationship to the accumulation of knowledge and experience of the people who use them. Languages are also class-sensitive, and regionally influenced. But, then again, Armstrongites always supposed that in any category, there had to be the one true exemplar.
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