This is how one should feel after going to church.
Not beaten to death over one's heart being deceitful above all things and desperately wicked or full of envy, jealousy, lust and greed!
UGH!
Enjoy
PS Neither Moses nor our parents understood the Universe as we do today in our time with much more to come I am sure .
How Great Thou Art
Amazing Grace
This is How Church Should Make You Feel
Best of the Holidays to You All
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ReplyDeleteI just returned from a Messianic Jewish congregation (only 25% Jews) Saturday night worship service where they spent about 15 minutes telling the story of the Maccabees and Hanukah with all the kids sitting up front and getting to answer questions - voluntarily of course. Then we had an hour of praise music singing and dancing. I left feeling very uplifted.
ReplyDeleteThe regular afternoon service was good as well. Lots of uplifting songs.
The sermon started off with an amusing video - a Hanukah worded version and video of Bohemian Rhapsody. Left services feeling great.
I am still making up my mind on what to do after COG, but this is looking and feeling very good so far.
Imagine feeling great instead of dead after a sermon.
I absolutely LOVE the Lord's Prayer. This rendition made my skin tingle listening to it. Thank you so much for the link.
ReplyDeleteYou'll Never Walk Alone is another one I always liked. These songs were and are beautiful, encouraging, uplifting, and edifying.
One of the most beautiful worship songs I have ever heard was Michael W. Smith's rendition of "Agnes Dei" at a Christian Concert some years ago. Smith sang "Friends are Friends Forever", a song much loved by the COG members at least in my area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPBmFwBSGb0
Music. Ahhhh
ReplyDeleteDPR
ReplyDeleteYeah, I can't win on this one for sure. This is a right brained nostalgic posting of that which still bumps around in my head about my experience as a kid in a really good positive church environment. Good memories and feelings.
My left brain of course reverts to fact based and the actual video without the emotional content is what I really see to be true. This is the ENFP in me. Extrovert, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceptive me. It's the time of year. It's long dark winters in the PNW. It's a reflective time with my sister having been killed this summer (still hard to imagine that) and my boys mom dying of a brain tumor. It's being a bit too lonely here as well though I can't think of a better place to actually live for me.
Christmas was always an amazing time in my childhood and the good memories of family and church friends are deep along with these kinds of hymns and sentiments.
I'm complicated LOL :)
Has anyone else noticed moniker name "DPR" has a repeated habit of commenting, and then deleting his comment? He does this quite a bit, and makes me wonder about why?
ReplyDeleteRichard
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DeleteDennis,
ReplyDeleteDid you ever notice how many ACOG members send Thanksgiving cards to their friends and extended family members? That's something that I rarely saw people do outside the ACOGs. Christmas cards were verboten in the ACOGs, but Thanksgiving cards let church members express their friendly and family affections without church disapproval. Though Christmas is historically false, it has become an outlet for laudable natural affection. When you take it away from people they naturally try to find other outlets, whether it is sending cards for Thanksgiving or giving gifts during the Feast of Tabernacles.
This is cultural bias to attach acog. Thanksgiving had no meaning for 40.000 if the 150.000 peak attendants. Christmas not so much for ex sda contingent within wcg.
DeleteNck
I had asked about that earlier in another post. I knew someone else on an early forum that occasionally did the same thing. Someone challenged him on it and the guy explained that he sometimes posted while drinking, and the following morning he ended up reconsidering his choices in words and the emotions behind them.
ReplyDeleteThere have been others who became irritated at their lack of acceptance by the blog or forum community and deleted all of their posts on the way out.
Others have deleted posts because some tattle-tale in their ACOG congregation figured out who they were.
Whatever the reason, it makes sense at the time to the person doing the deleting.
BB
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DeleteDid anyone really think that a small church could compete with the mega churches for musical quality?
ReplyDeleteWCG hymns were based on the bible. No wonder atheists don't like them.
ReplyDelete11:32 AM, No they were not!
DeleteSo, now we know the reason. DPR just enjoys being a pinche chingadera.
ReplyDeleteI stopped attending services over three decades ago, but I've received feedback that
ReplyDeleteACOG members have recognised my posts here. People most certainly tattle-tale. Or as they use to say on the X Files TV show, 'someone's always listening.' Some of these members are masters at exploiting chinks in peoples mental armour, so they carefully scrutinise what's said.
Big Brother is watching and noting.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteDennis,
Did you ever notice how many ACOG members send Thanksgiving cards to their friends and extended family members?
I think that's probably true. It was a conflict between keep contact and family in ones life and love and not being able to do Christmas. I'm sure we did but then all of our extended family was in the church at the time 35 plus, most full time ministers, elders, deacons, deaconesses and a few single relatives who were expected to bring watermelon to the picnics. lol So the chance for offense was small.
Hatred and anger are usually first reaction emotions, DPR, but they are not the ones that get the job done. They can make us toxic in so many ways, and contaminate everything good in life that we try to accomplish. We can accomplish so much more when those emotions fade away, and our logic and reason take over. I cut loose my hatred about 15 years ago, and my quality of life has improved dramatically. It doesn’t mean that I can see ACOG people neutrally and without their baggage, or want to be best buds with them, but I can generally carry on civil discourse with them, although it’s usually still difficult to empathize with people who bring everything on themselves and insist that everyone will eventually be forced to be just like them.
ReplyDeleteBB
Even though I am an agnostic I still found the music videos posted as inspiring. Good quality music almost moves me to tears even though some of it has religious content or is total religious in nature. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDelete“all our extended family was in the church at the time 35 plus” This seriously boggles my mind!
ReplyDeleteBased on the experience of our extended family on both sides, and their reaction to the belief system of the church, this is unfathomable to me. How did you and Jim manage to get your whole family involved in Armstrongism? We just didn’t see entire families convert in our local church areas during the 1950s and ‘60s. Joining Armstrongism generally led to separation of families, especially when Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents realized how the kids were being controlled and abused. It was quite remarkable back then when one or two additional family members joined the fold, let alone 35!
BB
DPR is venting.
ReplyDeleteHere is a Jewish Hanukkah song using one of the best modern songs Bohemian Rhapsody:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P30ckBf1wk
BB asked: How did you and Jim manage to get your whole family involved in Armstrongism
ReplyDeleteMy wife's family was an established church family from the 1950's already. I got interested when I was 14 and my brother in law Jim and sister were attending in Boise, Idaho (he was a forest ranger) when I visited them. We three went to church . I sneaked my application to AC but when interview to go, my parents liked the minister, became friends and there was peace. I went to college, In college my mom and dad started attending in Rochester, along with my sister and family. In the end we ended up with Three full time ministers, two elders, and everyone else was deacons and deaconesses plus all the kids. Pleased to say that none of them now are associated with any COG. We all had the approach that once was quite enough . My sister and Jim , both now deceased, stayed in with the Tkach crowd but Jim's heart was broken through it all and then retired. My parents went back to the very same pews from which they came , up the street from the house , the Orthodox Memorial Presbyterian Church. Other sister and family went to a megachurch for a time and the kids scattered to get on with life. My brother, who is still blind, deaf and can't speak, never came into the church and is doing well in a group home still blind, deaf and can't speak no matter him being my first anointing victim 38 years ago lol.
Interesting, Dennis. My immediate family also became established in the church in the 1950s. I met your brother in law Shorty at the first year of SEP in Texas, and we ended up being dorm mates our Freshman year at AC. In our family, it would have been unthinkable for there to be 35 people who became members. I guess some people are natural salesmen for a philosophy or lifestyle, and others are not. On the other hand, I’ve known some people who were capable of making people hate ice cream.
DeleteArmstrongism always seemed to have aversion therapy for itself built right into it. I can honestly state that I never wanted the Germans to come, even if we were to be protected. Or famines and pestilence. The people I was surrounded with at school, in the neighborhood, and in my “unconverted” family were well-intentioned people, trying to live good lives and raise their families, imparting their values to the next generation along the way.
Most of them needed a little tuning up, but certainly not the sort of radical, drastic and destructive punishment that the Armstrong movement preached. So, in retrospect, I was one who did not want it all to be true. Quite the opposite. So glad that the prophecies of the Jefferson Airplane were fulfilled, and the “truth” was found to be lies. That has restored my soul!
BB
I generally left sabbath services feeling quite positive and good about life until about 1990. Eventually i had to wonder why i bothered. I remember Herman Hoeh commenting something like this: "Some of you wonder why i don't go to church socials. It is because i found that i generally returned home in a bad mood. So i decided it is better for me not to go." That is pretty much how WCG functions became for me.
ReplyDeleteall of us have been sentenced to death for a reason...
ReplyDeletec f ben yochanan
CFBY
ReplyDeleteI bet you're a joy to be around
11:01
ReplyDeleteCFBY
I thought we were created as mortals. Or do you condider the gift of life a sentence. Not even Calvin would believe that.
Lachaim
Nck