Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
It depends on the definition of "messed up people." There's socially and morally confused people who are the victims of toxic families. To me, these shouldn't be avoided if they respond to correction. But there's morally challenged people who explode with rage when corrected. These deserve to be treated like lepers, as instructed by the bible. Their blood is on their own head.
The one comment I get sick of hearing is to be perfect as Christ is perfect.
The cultists believe they can earn their salvation by pretending to be perfect, which not one of them is able to do. That is the whole point of grace and work that Christ did.
Some of the nastiest people I have ever come across have been COG members and religious folk. I much prefer being around messy people, just like Christ preferred those people over the self-righteous law keepers.
Id rather post on BANNED with messed up people who love God, than be with messed up religious people (like Thiel, Pack, Flurry, Weinland, Cox et al) who really are seriously messed up.
I tend to think sound bites like this are trollisms. But I will take the bait. What law are you referring to? If it is the Torah, that moral code still exists. It is just that observing the Torah does not generate your personal salvation.
First of all, you don't keep Torah. I am not sure that anybody does, not even the Hasidim. Do you sequester your wife in a shed in the backyard during her period of menstruation? Or if you are a woman do you voluntarily submit to that sequestering?
Armstrongists bandy about the law (Torah) as if they were experts at keeping it and they are not. "O, how love I thy law, it is ever with me" they sing. They observe a novel mash-up of some parts of the OT and some parts of the NT that has then been filtered through the WCG leadership and the Church Administration Department. This then is a product that is unrecognizable to both Jews and Christians.
This novel syncretism as just a denominational code of ethics really isn't a bad thing. The Christian piece is incomplete - grace is almost non-existent in Splinterdom. Where Armstrongism comes to ruin is in adding some of these denominational requirements to the process of salvation. According to Paul that abrogates your relationship with Christ. Did you ever wonder why Splinterists are pre-occupied with the Mosaic Law and don't really say that much about Jesus?
A dedication to a faux law leads to a faux Christianity and a faux salvation.
"Nothing about what Jesus Christ wants. Never mind God the Father." Seriously? Messy people are the very people Jesus associated with! He did not sit around hobnobbing with COG members as they bitched and moaned about how good they are, so good in fact that they will be kings and priests in some delusional kingdom they think is to come but he rather associated with prostitutes, lepers, sinners, tax collectors, and the unclean of society. These were the people he valued above the self-righteous law-keepers and still does today! They "get it" while law-keepers do not.
@ No 2 HWA : And Jesus did not do away with his father's laws he extended it he made it even harder to keep like rather than just not committing regular adultery he said " Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh. on a woman to lust after her hath committed. adultery with her already in his heart." And also he said about the subject of Murder "1 John 3:15, ESV: "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Another example of God’s Law not passing away is found in Matthew 19:17. Christ says to the young man, “…but if you will enter into life, keep the commandments.” Why would Christ tell this man to keep the commandments if they were done away since John? It is obvious that God’s laws were still to be kept! All of God's laws are still in place unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God. Christ magnified the law so that for example, a man has committed adultery if he even looks lustfully at a woman as if he wanted to hop in the sack with her. He doesn't actually have to physically commit the act -- just think it. Same for murder-- just hating a person enough to want to kill them is spiritual murder. Now, if you want to have sex with a gal why you want to marry, then marry her and you're okay. There's no way to overcome the murder of hatred except to hate the evil and not the person. Jesus commanded us to keep the commandments: "So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to Him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” Matthew 19:17-19 NKJV
Hate the sin but love the sinner is Sunday school morality. It is also non biblical. It's thrown around to attract new members, but diluting truth for the sake of numbers is wrong. God abhors, hates, despises vile people. Examine all the scriptures on the subject.
Do you sequester your wife in a shed in the backyard during her period of menstruation? ===================================================================================
I'm centrally blind so without alt text describing the pic I don't get descriptions of most pics on PC and not all on my iPhone and I'm on pc atm so I'm fubar'd when it comes to pics XP
9:53. The fact of the matter is that Jesus rebuked every single law keeper as self-righteous because they claimed to be so virtuous. He overrode their righteous physical law keeping by pointing out to every single one of them that they do not keep the law as they claim, much like all COGers today. His entire ministry was to prove that it was IMPOSSIBLE to keep the law and that something better was coming. Jesus took it even further and added the spiritual element to it all by claiming that not only were they committing adultery in the physical act but that they were also committing in their hearts and minds when they lusted, which they all did, just like all of today's leaders and super righteous church members. The leaders of the COG's today (Thiel, Pack, Flurry, Weston, Kubik, Weinland, and et all) are all big-time lawbreakers and sinners). Every time these guys open their mouths they sin.
The picture is of a woman with a Bible on her lap holding up a price of paper that says: " I would rather attend church with messed up people who love God, than religious people who dislike messed up people."
Anon 1:12 I think Jesus' message was that he died for your sins so you could be forgiven, but that doesn't mean you can keep breaking God's laws, you should strive to keep them as much as possible. God will forgive occasional sins, so we must strive to be perfect, although we cannot be totally perfect like Christ with the help of God's spirit, we can be perfect from now on.
Anonymous (9:53) you wrote "Why would Christ tell this man to keep the commandments if they were done away since John?"
Jesus magnified the law by making it spiritual. Circumcision became of the heart rather than of the foreskin. Adultery became a matter of spiritual disposition rather than the literal act. And Jesus became our rest rather than the seventh day.
Is this magnification more difficult in spirit rather than in the letter? Yes, but God provided the Holy Spirit to help and grace if we err. Armstrongists fall victim to their use of the Mosaic Law because you can observe the letter without ever changing spiritually. For instance, you are a good person, under Armstrongism, if you keep the seventh day among other similar requirements. But the problem is, keeping the seventh day and those other similar requirements doesn't mean you love anyone. That is why the the Mosaic Law needed magnification.
I will explain to you exactly how Armstrongists make this mistake. Armstrongists do not recognize that both the NT and OT are instantiations of God's eternal, moral, perfect law adapted to mankind. One adaptation, the OT, was for ancient Israel and the other adaptation, the NT, was for all of mankind. That is why there are similarities between the OT and NT - they separate instantiations of the same eternal law for different audiences. But these similarities lead Armstrongists to conflate the two and fail to understand the NT scriptures that state that the NT has replaced the OT. Both the OT law (as given at Sinai) and the NT law (as given in the Sermon on the Mount) are holy. And Armstrongists do not understand how you can extract something out of the holy OT and the holy NT, add them together and come up with a syncretism that is unholy. But it becomes unholy if it results in a modification of salvation by faith as Jesus defined it. And Armstrongists added requirements to salvation in Christ.
Jesus told the man to keep the commandments. He was referring to the commandments that he, Jesus, had taught. As Paul wrote "For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus." These are commandments that originated with Jesus. One thing you can be sure of, when Jesus used the term "commandments" he was not referring to the mash-up developed by HWA and Herman Hoeh and filtered through WCG's leadership (consisting of men untrained in Christian theology) and the WCG Church Administration Department.
The Family of God currently has two members, the Father and Jesus Christ. Both are "God", there are many different beings of God, they are in a family, so think of it as if God was the surname of a family of spiritual beings the family started with two, but there is more coming for the ultimate reward in this life If you join his family and rule in the kingdom of God, not only can you worship God, but the plain truth is that you can become God.
What is Jesus' new commandments in the NT? If it is Love God and Love Your Neighbor as the two great commandments, then aren't these two "new" commandments just a rehash of the 10 commandments of OT with a more stringent spiritual orientation?
Isn't keeping the Sabbath, Holy Days and other requirements of God show obedience, respect and love for God? By keeping the 10 commandments, we demonstrate our love for God and fellow man.
Did you read about the woman in a mainstream church who felt like committing suicide? She was the pianist in the church and her husband attended there at same church and was having an affair with one of the women members. Nothing could be said since it's all about grace and not works and we're not supposed to judge. How do people come up with this lawless type of doctrine? The word "legalism" can be used negatively by those who are wanting lawlessness. Yes, legalism is wrong but exactly what is it? Grace Communion in 95 certainly didn't know which end was up. But looking back, I see their back end had preeminence. And, to Anonymous July 2, 2021 at 1:12 PM 9:53, who said "The fact of the matter is that Jesus rebuked every single law keeper as self-righteous because they claimed to be so virtuous," do you think Jesus rebuked his mother Mary and Joseph? Your fact of the matter lacks substantially.
The whole meaning of the book of Job is to show that if you do **EVERYTHING** that God says to do it is still **HIS** RIGHTEOUSNESS because they are ** HIS ** RIGHTEOUS laws!! And we are incapable of keeping his laws without **HIS** Spirit so I ask you; WHOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS IS IT??????????? “They have **ALL* turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is NONE who does good, no, NOT EVEN ONE”. (Ps.14:3) WHOSE righteousness is it???????? Jesus Christ came to call SINNERS to repentance and spent his time among them and eating with them, etc. I have been in the Church of God for a VERY LONG TIME and I have found that the people in the so called world are MUCH MORE PLEASANT TO BE AROUND than the SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS, PHARISAICAL, SO CALLED Christians. Especially those in the so called churches of God. (LCOG is the absolute WORST in my opinion)
Anon 10:17 am if by LCOG you mean the living church of God that is because most of their members are narcissists they think they're special when they are not better they think they are better than the uncalled world when they are not and they put down all churches that contradict them they even had a shooter named Terry Michael Ratzmann and both UCG and LCG had child molesters and all kind of immoral people who are not christ-like and you would think you would think find in a prison and Gerald Flurry's group has had many suicides and so these churches of God and the original WCG are not truly God's people the good ones would expose the ministry of the evil stuff that is going on inside so that more people do not have to go through the horrible experiences so many evil people had to go through.
People should always love each other regardless.
ReplyDeleteIt depends on the definition of "messed up people." There's socially and morally confused people who are the victims of toxic families. To me, these shouldn't be avoided if they respond to correction. But there's morally challenged people who explode with rage when corrected. These deserve to be treated like lepers, as instructed by the bible. Their blood is on their own head.
ReplyDeleteThe one comment I get sick of hearing is to be perfect as Christ is perfect.
ReplyDeleteThe cultists believe they can earn their salvation by pretending to be perfect, which not one of them is able to do. That is the whole point of grace and work that Christ did.
Some of the nastiest people I have ever come across have been COG members and religious folk. I much prefer being around messy people, just like Christ preferred those people over the self-righteous law keepers.
Great picture by the way!
The law is NOT done away
ReplyDeleteId rather post on BANNED with messed up people who love God,
ReplyDeletethan be with messed up religious people
(like Thiel, Pack, Flurry, Weinland, Cox et al) who really are seriously messed up.
Anonymous (12:58)
ReplyDeleteI tend to think sound bites like this are trollisms. But I will take the bait. What law are you referring to? If it is the Torah, that moral code still exists. It is just that observing the Torah does not generate your personal salvation.
First of all, you don't keep Torah. I am not sure that anybody does, not even the Hasidim.
Do you sequester your wife in a shed in the backyard during her period of menstruation? Or if you are a woman do you voluntarily submit to that sequestering?
Armstrongists bandy about the law (Torah) as if they were experts at keeping it and they are not. "O, how love I thy law, it is ever with me" they sing. They observe a novel mash-up of some parts of the OT and some parts of the NT that has then been filtered through the WCG leadership and the Church Administration Department. This then is a product that is unrecognizable to both Jews and Christians.
This novel syncretism as just a denominational code of ethics really isn't a bad thing. The Christian piece is incomplete - grace is almost non-existent in Splinterdom. Where Armstrongism comes to ruin is in adding some of these denominational requirements to the process of salvation. According to Paul that abrogates your relationship with Christ. Did you ever wonder why Splinterists are pre-occupied with the Mosaic Law and don't really say that much about Jesus?
A dedication to a faux law leads to a faux Christianity and a faux salvation.
******** Click on my icon for Disclaimer
Nothing about what Jesus Christ wants. Never mind God the Father.
ReplyDeleteThis post is NOT reflective of how the ACOG membership think but IS reflective of how patronising puffed up corrupt leadership think.
ReplyDeleteTonto you brought up the good ones.
ReplyDeleteWhy is Tonto approving posts now?
Delete"Nothing about what Jesus Christ wants. Never mind God the Father." Seriously? Messy people are the very people Jesus associated with! He did not sit around hobnobbing with COG members as they bitched and moaned about how good they are, so good in fact that they will be kings and priests in some delusional kingdom they think is to come but he rather associated with prostitutes, lepers, sinners, tax collectors, and the unclean of society. These were the people he valued above the self-righteous law-keepers and still does today! They "get it" while law-keepers do not.
ReplyDelete@ No 2 HWA : And Jesus did not do away with his father's laws he extended it he made it even harder to keep like rather than just not committing regular adultery he said " Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh. on a woman to lust after her hath committed. adultery with her already in his heart." And also he said about the subject of Murder "1 John 3:15, ESV: "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Another example of God’s Law not passing away is found in Matthew 19:17. Christ says to the young man, “…but if you will enter into life, keep the commandments.” Why would Christ tell this man to keep the commandments if they were done away since John? It is obvious that God’s laws were still to be kept! All of God's laws are still in place unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God. Christ magnified the law so that for example, a man has committed adultery if he even looks lustfully at a woman as if he wanted to hop in the sack with her. He doesn't actually have to physically commit the act -- just think it. Same for murder-- just hating a person enough to want to kill them is spiritual murder. Now, if you want to have sex with a gal why you want to marry, then marry her and you're okay. There's no way to overcome the murder of hatred except to hate the evil and not the person. Jesus commanded us to keep the commandments:
ReplyDelete"So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to Him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
Matthew 19:17-19 NKJV
Hate the sin but love the sinner is Sunday school morality. It is also non biblical. It's thrown around to attract new members, but diluting truth for the sake of numbers is wrong.
DeleteGod abhors, hates, despises vile people. Examine all the scriptures on the subject.
Do you sequester your wife in a shed in the backyard during her period of menstruation?
ReplyDelete===================================================================================
Lev 15:19 doesn't mention a shed or backyard.
Anon 10:47 AM of course not but it is obvious that Jesus was a radical activist for the ten commandments.
ReplyDeleteWhat's in the picture?
ReplyDeleteI'm centrally blind so without alt text describing the pic I don't get descriptions of most pics on PC and not all on my iPhone and I'm on pc atm so I'm fubar'd when it comes to pics XP
Thanks in advance :)
9:53. The fact of the matter is that Jesus rebuked every single law keeper as self-righteous because they claimed to be so virtuous. He overrode their righteous physical law keeping by pointing out to every single one of them that they do not keep the law as they claim, much like all COGers today. His entire ministry was to prove that it was IMPOSSIBLE to keep the law and that something better was coming. Jesus took it even further and added the spiritual element to it all by claiming that not only were they committing adultery in the physical act but that they were also committing in their hearts and minds when they lusted, which they all did, just like all of today's leaders and super righteous church members. The leaders of the COG's today (Thiel, Pack, Flurry, Weston, Kubik, Weinland, and et all) are all big-time lawbreakers and sinners). Every time these guys open their mouths they sin.
ReplyDeleteStephen:
ReplyDeleteThe picture is of a woman with a Bible on her lap holding up a price of paper that says: " I would rather attend church with messed up people who love God, than religious people who dislike messed up people."
Anon 1:12 I think Jesus' message was that he died for your sins so you could be forgiven, but that doesn't mean you can keep breaking God's laws, you should strive to keep them as much as possible. God will forgive occasional sins, so we must strive to be perfect, although we cannot be totally perfect like Christ with the help of God's spirit, we can be perfect from now on.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous (9:53) you wrote "Why would Christ tell this man to keep the commandments if they were done away since John?"
ReplyDeleteJesus magnified the law by making it spiritual. Circumcision became of the heart rather than of the foreskin. Adultery became a matter of spiritual disposition rather than the literal act. And Jesus became our rest rather than the seventh day.
Is this magnification more difficult in spirit rather than in the letter? Yes, but God provided the Holy Spirit to help and grace if we err. Armstrongists fall victim to their use of the Mosaic Law because you can observe the letter without ever changing spiritually. For instance, you are a good person, under Armstrongism, if you keep the seventh day among other similar requirements. But the problem is, keeping the seventh day and those other similar requirements doesn't mean you love anyone. That is why the the Mosaic Law needed magnification.
I will explain to you exactly how Armstrongists make this mistake. Armstrongists do not recognize that both the NT and OT are instantiations of God's eternal, moral, perfect law adapted to mankind. One adaptation, the OT, was for ancient Israel and the other adaptation, the NT, was for all of mankind. That is why there are similarities between the OT and NT - they separate instantiations of the same eternal law for different audiences. But these similarities lead Armstrongists to conflate the two and fail to understand the NT scriptures that state that the NT has replaced the OT. Both the OT law (as given at Sinai) and the NT law (as given in the Sermon on the Mount) are holy. And Armstrongists do not understand how you can extract something out of the holy OT and the holy NT, add them together and come up with a syncretism that is unholy. But it becomes unholy if it results in a modification of salvation by faith as Jesus defined it. And Armstrongists added requirements to salvation in Christ.
Jesus told the man to keep the commandments. He was referring to the commandments that he, Jesus, had taught. As Paul wrote "For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus." These are commandments that originated with Jesus. One thing you can be sure of, when Jesus used the term "commandments" he was not referring to the mash-up developed by HWA and Herman Hoeh and filtered through WCG's leadership (consisting of men untrained in Christian theology) and the WCG Church Administration Department.
******* Click on my icon for Disclaimer
The Family of God currently has two members, the Father and Jesus Christ. Both are "God", there are many different beings of God, they are in a family, so think of it as if God was the surname of a family of spiritual beings the family started with two, but there is more coming for the ultimate reward in this life If you join his family and rule in the kingdom of God, not only can you worship God, but the plain truth is that you can become God.
ReplyDeleteWe need more legalism because it creates order on the earth. Laws based on what is right or wrong instead of just belief.
ReplyDeleteNEO at July 2, 2021 at 2:01 PM,
ReplyDeleteWhat is Jesus' new commandments in the NT? If it is Love God and Love Your Neighbor as the two great commandments, then aren't these two "new" commandments just a rehash of the 10 commandments of OT with a more stringent spiritual orientation?
Isn't keeping the Sabbath, Holy Days and other requirements of God show obedience, respect and love for God? By keeping the 10 commandments, we demonstrate our love for God and fellow man.
Did you read about the woman in a mainstream church who felt like committing suicide? She was the pianist in the church and her husband attended there at same church and was having an affair with one of the women members. Nothing could be said since it's all about grace and not works and we're not supposed to judge. How do people come up with this lawless type of doctrine? The word "legalism" can be used negatively by those who are wanting lawlessness. Yes, legalism is wrong but exactly what is it? Grace Communion in 95 certainly didn't know which end was up. But looking back, I see their back end had preeminence.
ReplyDeleteAnd, to Anonymous July 2, 2021 at 1:12 PM 9:53, who said "The fact of the matter is that Jesus rebuked every single law keeper as self-righteous because they claimed to be so virtuous," do you think Jesus rebuked his mother Mary and Joseph? Your fact of the matter lacks substantially.
ReplyDeleteThe whole meaning of the book of Job is to show that if you do **EVERYTHING** that God says to do it is still **HIS** RIGHTEOUSNESS because they are ** HIS ** RIGHTEOUS laws!! And we are incapable of keeping his laws without **HIS** Spirit so I ask you; WHOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS IS IT??????????? “They have **ALL* turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is NONE who does good, no, NOT EVEN ONE”. (Ps.14:3) WHOSE righteousness is it???????? Jesus Christ came to call SINNERS to repentance and spent his time among them and eating with them, etc. I have been in the Church of God for a VERY LONG TIME and I have found that the people in the so called world are MUCH MORE PLEASANT TO BE AROUND than the SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS, PHARISAICAL, SO CALLED Christians. Especially those in the so called churches of God. (LCOG is the absolute WORST in my opinion)
Anger issues 10:17.
DeleteAnon 10:17 am if by LCOG you mean the living church of God that is because most of their members are narcissists they think they're special when they are not better they think they are better than the uncalled world when they are not and they put down all churches that contradict them they even had a shooter named Terry Michael Ratzmann and both UCG and LCG had child molesters and all kind of immoral people who are not christ-like and you would think you would think find in a prison and Gerald Flurry's group has had many suicides and so these churches of God and the original WCG are not truly God's people the good ones would expose the ministry of the evil stuff that is going on inside so that more people do not have to go through the horrible experiences so many evil people had to go through.
ReplyDeleteI'm tired of COG people telling me to lose my victim mentality.
ReplyDeleteControl voice they just like to stick up for their COG they don't care about protecting victims from harm.
ReplyDeleteWhat victims it's 2021 not 1982 anymore.
ReplyDelete