Don Ward is back with one of his year-end encyclicals to his faithful followers in the United Church of God. It has been a rough year for many UCG members as they are constantly being berated for not doing enough. There is that "gospel" that UCG assumes they are getting out to the world, though you would be hard-pressed to find anyone on the street who has ever heard of them.
God has not called you to just sit on the sidelines and watch the world go by. He expects you to be in the arena fighting the good fight of faith with all your might.I am curious to know exactly when UCG has fought the "good fight". Its leadership has been on the dole since they apostatized from the Worldwide Church of God in a fit of rebellion as they went from one paycheck to another paycheck.
Ward continues on with this about the "calling" UCG members are the recipients of. One of the things UCG members must do is be baptized in order to be received into a relationship with Jesus Christ. He then lists 5 things that church members are called into. You can quickly so who gets the short end of the stick with last billing, as usual.
Perhaps our greatest spiritual blessing is our calling. In order to enter into the covenant of sacrifice with God and Christ we must hear the word and respond to it (Romans 10:10-17). That is, we must repent, exercise faith in the sacrifice of Christ, be baptized and receive the laying on of hands. Do we grasp, understand and appreciate the significance of our calling? We have been called to: (1) the great battle of the ages; (2) the hope of the ages; (3) the work of God; (4) the Church of God; and (5) the body of Christ, the family and Kingdom of God. Do we remotely grasp, understand and appreciate the significance and importance of our calling?Ward seems to imply that baptism is a requirement for salvation. It is actually quite simple,
there is no external act that anyone needs to do for salvation. Faith is the only criteria needed. Romans 4 and Acts 15.
Ward then goes on to talk about a battle that's been going on for some time now, apparently. What he fails to realize is that battle has already been fought and won, but since Jesus gets continually short shifted, the law is necessary to trump him.
How can UCG members be focused upon the "hope of the ages" when the stone commandments are constantly being used to beat down members. How can they find that "hope" when "he" is hardly ever discussed?
God has called you to bear fruit. Every person has been given some gift. Never underestimate the gifts that God has given you—to do so would be to take your calling lightly. God has not called you to just sit on the sidelines and watch the world go by. He expects you to be in the arena fighting the good fight of faith with all your might.That "good fight" translates into tithe money. He should just admit it.
Never discount just your presence at Sabbath services. Through fellowship we draw strength and encouragement from each other.Getting UCG members interested in attending services regularly has been a task for UCG. Given that UCG services are filled with elderly men preaching the same sermons they have preached since they preached them in the Worldwide Church of God, keeping members interested has been a hard task. Even the blue sock puppet Jelly has not been successful.
UCG members should not wait for the ministry to do anything, it is up to them, particularly the ability to prophesy.
God gives talents to every person (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). God expects us to use our gifts and talents to bear fruit: “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another” (Romans 12:6-10).Seriously, can you imagine what would happen when some UCG members might stand up and say they had the sure word of prophecy? They would be drummed out of the church as fast as Rod Meredith kicked Bob Thiel out for making such a preposterous claim. How could some ignorant lay member have a word of prophecy when the top dogs can't get their act together and even pretend to make prophecies?
Better yet, when has Don Ward ever had the faith to prophesy?
`
19 comments:
The remark that baptism is not required but faith, to me without theological qualifications, sounds like, marriage is not required to have children, just be faithful to one wife.
So I disagree to agree. :-)
Nck
NO2HWA, I guess you have forgotten the standard ACOG explanation. The ACOG syllogism goes like this:
"Prophecy" is inspired speech.
Inspired speech is what ministers provide in every sermon.
Therefore, every minister prophesies!
Woe be to the member who dares to take on that role, which is meant for Gods Ministers™. But ACOG "prophecy" isn't what Bwana Bob thinks it is; it is merely the speech of a man inspired by God, even if he is merely telling you to buy American cars but never in the color red. Ministers don't need to predict what will happen even as soon as next week in order to prophesy, and their doing so does not make them "prophets."
The only place members can use their gifts and talents without fear of the AC Sanhedrin is anonymously on-line and in their own communities far away from their COG brand.
Uncanny how it often appears all three leaders of LCG,UCG and COGWA get together and coordinate their messages. Maybe that is what goes on at New Moons (j/k). I'm sure it largely has to do with how very little material COG's actually have to talk about. The focus must be precise and narrow so as not to draw any attention away from material designed to keep the sheep in line, asleep and away from peeking behind the curtain.
If anyone, including the members and the leaders of UCG were called to prophesy, they would have been provided with much more accurate information than what has been used over the decades as the Armstrong prophecy mold. Surely, something should have been learned by this point in time from the continued failings of that mold, from the death of the leader who was once said to be the one taking us into through the cataclysm and into the new era, from deeper knowledge and perception of history, from branches of science such as genetics, epidemiology, and climatology, and last but not least, from the unnecessary suffering of members living under the gun of various time tables which have failed.
HWA was very specific, claiming to have detailed knowledge of our immediate future throughout his career. That claim was empty.
Those who took it to be truth, and who planned their lives in accordance with HWA's set of "gnosticism" (for lack of a better term) lived pitiful lives, and many have already died, possibly realizing at the very end that they had indeed thrown away their lives.
UCG and all the other ACOGs should develop a better concept of Christian living, and should concentrate on teaching that. The behavior they have taught throughout the past has not opened any sort of door to understanding prophecy. It has only facillitated manipulation and exploitation.
BB
Ward wrote: "Perhaps our greatest spiritual blessing is our calling."
This statement encapsulates a strategy that Armstrongist Millerite ministers have used repeatedly. The strategy is the create the idea that salvation is conditional - yea, it is hanging by a thread. That those people sitting in the audience just might not receive salvation unless they do something right away. Usually, what they need to do involves giving money to "the church."
For a Christian, the greatest spiritual blessing is salvation - not a calling with the very tenuous possibility of salvation unless performance is acceptable to denominational leaders. Biblically, the salvation is a done deal and will be correlated to good works. Christian good works include much, much more that proselyting or supporting an organizational infrastructure. These Millerites speak against the true work of God in people's lives when they shift salvation to a tentative basis in order to achieve organizational ends.
If you notice, the five points towards which "the calling" is directed are all about the lay member's organizational engagement with the UCG. There is no mention, for instance, of any of the qualities described in the Beatitudes - which Jesus placed at the top of the Sermon on the Mount.
Ward is not a bad guy, IMHO. He always struck me as being more conscientious than most.
Prophecy Scoreboard:
David Koresh - 1
Other Millerites - 0
I do not think Ward intended to emphasize prophecy. He just could not cite 1 Cor. 12:4-11
without its inclusion. I heard some WCG minister decades ago cite this same passage and explain that "prophet" was no longer a role within the Church. I cannot recall the rationale.
Am I the only one who when they hear the name "Don Ward" , they have a flashback to the television series
"Leave It To Beaver"??
"Seriously, can you imagine what would happen when some UCG members might stand up and say they had the sure word of prophecy? They would be drummed out of the church as fast as Rod Meredith kicked Bob Thiel out for making such a preposterous claim. How could some ignorant lay member have a word of prophecy when the top dogs can't get their act together and even pretend to make prophecies?"
Don Ward clearly stayed in Grace Communion way too long, so that now he's pulling a Grace Communion in UCG.
Yeah, anyone in UCG who wants to stay in UCG should avoid Ward's advice like the plague. Anyone who even so much as gets a pet doctrine hobbyhorse is quickly told that the last thing UCG needs is "new truth." Presumably because the ministers view such types as usurping their turf.
UCG is just a bunch of people who wanted to hang onto WCG after the Tkaches blew it up, so they recreated it. In WCG, laymembers didn't have "gifts" or "ministries" of their own. They were expected to sit down, shut up, pray, obey, and most of all pay—bankroll the ministry of the "apostle." Whether UCG has "apostles" or not depends upon when you ask them. Right now, they'd probably say no. But ask them during the next schism and they'll probably tell you every single UCG minister is a member of the Literal Modern Successor of the Levitical Priesthood. At least that's what John Elliott claimed during the last schism, and to my knowledge no one contradicted him. Whether or not they're willing to say they are "apostles" or "prophets" or whatever, one thing is for sure, they get super threatened as soon as anyone sets so much as a pinky toe onto what they consider to be their god-given turf.
Of course, if no "new" ideas are tolerated within UCG, aren't they condemned to stagnation? Not exactly a new problem in christianity though, given it's propped up by a book that been stagnant for 1600 years. Despite that, christianity has survived by continually being reinvented, continually reinterpreting those dank texts to, as Dennis says, "make them mean what they never meant." That's what Herbert did as well. We inherited a form of christianity that would have been totally foreign to 1st century christians. In fact, since we have no idea how those texts might have been tampered with between 100 and 400, our christian texts would probably be totally foreign to 1st century christians as well.
If there were any god backing up those texts, "new truth" probably wouldn't be so threatening to UCG ministers, plus, it wouldn't be a foregone conclusion that it would lead to chaos. Since it does lead to chaos, at least in the absence of an authoritarian like Constantine or Herbert Armstrong, if there ever was a god backing up those texts, he's gone now.
Bob Thiel has gone ballistic on this posting over at Cogwriter.com
https://www.cogwriter.com/news/cog-news/banned-disses-ucg-and-lies-about-bob-thiel/
Are UCG Members Called to Prophesy?
NO!
I was a bit surprised a few years ago to hear a UCG Pastor challenge members to attend services every week in the coming year.
There was a time when that was presumed and expected in COG's - so much that you felt guilty if you missed a week. Apparently that's changed.
Those tricks don't work anymore!
According to the Apostle Paul, Christians are all supposed to seek the gifts of the spirit, "especially prophecy". 1 Corinthians 14:1. Verse 3 states... "But the one who prophecies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging, and comfort." Unfortunately most of us view prophesying as only foretelling the future, but this verse seems to indicate that there is more to it than that, and that all of us should be learning how to do it, and that it is a spiritual gift. Frankly, if we actually applied what Paul says about "prophesying" within the cogs our "assemblies" would look much different than the liturgy we currently follow. "Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets." 1Corinthians 14:29-32 Can you imagine anyone in a current cog getting up and interrupting the speaker, only to have that speaker sit down and become silent? Or any circumstance where the words of the "prophet" or speaker are weighed by the others in the room? The Greek word for weigh in verse 29 is diakrino and it means to distinguish or to judge.
When was the last time any of us felt comforted, encouraged, or strengthened by some minister's "prophetic" speculation? We have mistakenly allowed others to decide who can and cannot exercise the gifts of the spirit we are all supposed to be growing in and exhibiting. We have allowed others to define a "prophet" as some sort of ranked "office" to be filled, rather than simply a function or gift to be exercised within the body of Christ. And while prophesying can involve foretelling future events or interpreting scripture, the one who does this must submit him or herself(Acts 21:8-9; 1Corinthians 11:5; Acts 2:17-18) to the the scrutiny of others within the body, and measure up to the scrutiny of scripture itself. 1 Corinthians 14:29; Deuteronomy 18:21-22; 2Peter 1:20
Concerned Sister
You need to check out Butthurt Bob’s blog. His Prophetic panties are all twisted over things mentioned in this post. The wounded martyr routine is pathetic. He is particularly pissed that it was mentioned that I had kicked him out of LCG
Satan got his false prophets like Flurry, Pack, Weinland, and Thiel to prophesy falsely, and it was a disaster.
Others need to be careful that they do not become false prophets too.
Of course, Bob is going to say or do anything to justify his existence and importance. A prophecy group called the Beatles wrote a song about him in the '60s. It was called "Nowhere Man".
BB
Byker, try this one to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby":
Ah, look at all the Armstrong people
Ah, look at all the Armstrong people
Bitter Bwana, prophesies lies in his church where all Africa’s been
Lives for their dreams
Waits at the keyboard, biding the lies he’s imbibed from the Whore,
Mayans, and more!
“All the Armstrong people
Where do they all come from?
All the Armstrong people
Why won’t they join my throng?”
“Rod was my Daddy, leading me on with his flattery, so I would pay.
Why would he say
That I might be a prophet unless really I may.
Now it’s my day!”
“All the Armstrong people
Where do they all come from?
All the Armstrong people
Why won’t they join my throng?”
Ah, look at all the Armstrong people
Ah, look at all the Armstrong people
Bitter Bwana died in his church and was buried along with its name
More of the same
Daddy Rod Meredith, quite unaware of the tare while he rots in the grave
No one was saved
All the Armstrong people
Where do they all come from?
All the Armstrong people
They’ll never join Bob’s throng!
Herb keeps getting deader
all the time....
Uh oh, looks like Bob is out of butt-hurt cream. Looks like it's time for us to take up a collection and buy him a case of the stuff.
Post a Comment