When listening to the entire weekly post from Gerald Weston to Living Church of God faithful he discusses how they just finished a Council of Elders meeting in Charlotte. I was struck by the fact that they as a church still do not understand the Old Covenant and New Covenant differences and because of that they still have members AND ministers asking why they do not have to do certain Old Covenant teachings. Remember the real reason, this is the Church of God, it picks and chooses what it wants to do.
You should listen to the whole message. Gerald's Council of Elders is still getting into disputes about whether or not LCG members should wear tassels, and whether new mothers are required to observe the differing quarantine periods given after boys or girls are born. How can we expect these men to deal with challenges like pandemic viruses and economic dislocation when they are stuck on some of the milkiest milk of the New Covenant? From Weston's comments it's clear that LCG "leaders" don't understand EITHER the old Armstrongist application of the New Covenant OR its actual Biblical application.
17 comments:
I am interested in how they resolve the issue of tassels and a woman's time of "impurity" after childrbirth. Herman Hoeh promulgated as binding in his article "Which Old Testament LAWS should we keep today?" the following position:
1. The "statutes and laws of God" existed before the Old Covenant and therefore cannot be abolished by the Old Covenant passing away. They are a part of God's eternal spiritual law. They are a magnification of the Ten Commandments. They stand or fall with the Ten Commandments.
2. Abraham kept not only God's commandments (I assume the Ten) but also God's statutes and laws.
3. "Judgments are binding decisions of judges based on God's previously revealed law." (the term "binding" is in italics in Hoeh's text for emphasis.) And were given to the people along with the statutes. They are applications of God's eternal spiritual law. God made provision for judgments to be established over the centuries (Numbers 27:11). God apparently did not make provision for judgments to be cancelled. See point 5 below.
4. The ordinances are also to be kept. (Mal 4:4)
5. "God will not alter his spiritual laws." And "God alone has the right to add and change or alter the ritual laws." It took God himself to cancel the sacrifices. Why would the rest of the Law of Moses be any different?
The issue that I am interested in is how they can possibly cancel or change anything in the Law of Moses. What authority would they call on to accomplish this. If they do cancel some of the Mosaic Law will they not only give their congregants the results but will they explain the process as to how the decision was made and how that decision is exegeted from scripture. Congregants need to know why they should keep this part but not that part. I would like to know the process. It may give new meaning to the term "cancel culture."
As I see it, the Sabbath itself stands and falls based on these decisions. If they can cancel tassels or the period of impurity, they can cancel the Sabbath or anything else. The audit trail on all of it goes back to God's eternal spiritual law according to Hoeh. If the Sabbath can be cancelled by men, this essentially makes the Sabbath a "who cares" issue. Also, if they reject any part of the Law of Moses, they automatically reject the offical and classical position of Herman Hoeh. This makes them not a classical Armstrongist denomination but a post-classical Armstrongist denomination - something new that HWA/Hoeh would not recognize.
I hope someone will keep us apprised.
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THE APOSTLE TONTO RESOLVES THE ISSUES...
*** Tassel are a Hassle.
*** You dont want to bring a baby around people for at least a month, if not 45 days after birth. Give the kid a chance to have its immune system develop, and it has been my experience that church or any social gatherings are a great place to "catch something infectious" anyhow.
it must be doubly difficult for LCG members having to deal with far-right Pharisaical leaders wanting to go back to tassels and pregnancy quarantines, even as we watch Trumpie's little time bombs on the Supreme Court slowly steal our country from us, something that he could not do himself because the system thankfully worked this time.
Strange times all around, whether you life in the Twilight Zone bubble of an ACOG, or the USA as democracy slowly collapses.
Ban those self inviting ministry and their nosey wives then Tonto.
Don't fall for the media and celebrity hype- "Trump's timebomb" recognised that the federal government wasn't the one to make these decisions- is now in the states hands. It didn't "ban abortions" like many are trying to advertise.
The pastor of Church of God Eternal has been on a tirade against tassels, and all activity resembling anything Jewish.
Like the LCG, Jon Brisby says tassels are for people without the holy spirit. Does this mean unbaptized members, children, and co-workers should be wearing them?
The federal government has generally jumped in and intervened when the states' approach to certain issues was seen as being grossly unfair. The most profound example with which most would be familiar is civil rights. The only way in which black people were ever going to be treated fairly and uniformly was if the Feds co-opted state law. Go back and watch the Burt Reynolds classic "White Lightning" and listen to Ned Beatty's rant about the FBI and the CIA, and the NAACP, and you will get a dose of the realities that go on in ignorant redneck states!
Revisionists euphemize the reasons for the Civil War and say that it was all about states' rights. Yeah, it was. It was about certain states defending their rights to own people!
Just as it was beginning to look as if the rest of the world was beginning to accept and take the USA seriously, they got a real good dose of "They're back!!!"
Nature of the beast in the COGs. Members start reading through the Pentateuch and between the nice gory stories about handmaidens and stonings and harlots and Amalekites, they see those practices and wonder if they can get more points on God's scoreboard doing things like that.
Oddly, nobody ever suggests that pooping in a hole outside as the law commands is a good idea though.
I have heard that explanation before about tassles, but where in the Bible does it tell COG members that it represented the spirit? And where does it say that you don't need to do it today? They still keep pentecost dont they?
There are laws and then added laws. The added laws were removed after Christ's resurrection: Gal 3:17-19. The Ten were not added laws. Other laws: added or not?
If your clothing has twisted threads at the edges, it has tassels!! Deut 22:12: Hebrew for tassels is twisted thread. But tassels in Num 15:38 are fringes/tassels to help the wearer remember the commandments, is an added law, now removed, noting the Holy Spirit will now help one remember.
Birth quarantines? It probably is a good idea not to go to church for 40 or 80 days, particularly now when alleged U. S. funded partially viruses have escaped from labs.
It’s okay. There are states like NY, CA, NV, etc that have far more liberal abortion laws than Europe, Australia, etc. So, in as much as i care, most Europeans that are educated on the subject know that their laws are stricter than those available to Americans. Here in the U.S. you can find many a state that allows you to kill your child at 9 mos gestation, not so in Europe which does take viability seriously.
Anonymous 9:08 wrote, "Birth quarantines? It probably is a good idea not to go to church for 40 or 80 days..."
No. You don't get it. These laws in the Armstrongist domain are not at the level of "good ideas." They are derived from the Ten Commandments; they are the eternal spiritual law of God (Hoeh asserts the laws and statutes existed before the Old Covenant); they are written on the heart; and if you break them willfully you will lose salvation.
The only loop hole their ministry has on this is to classify both the tassels issue and the impurity issue as ritual or ceremonial and in nature like the sacrifices. If they can be somehow rolled into the sacrifices, they can be abrogated. The chances of rationally doing this are poor. The tassels law appears right after an admonition about observing the Sabbath. It is not contiguous with the foregoing laws dealing with sacrifices. And it is directly connected with the the commandments. It seems to be inspired by the failure to keep the Sabbath mentioned in the previous verses: like remember the Sabbath and so you will remember the Sabbath and other commandments put tassels on your garments.
To exegete these laws as ritual is to open the door to exegete many other similar laws as ritual. Where does it end? To cancel this impurity law is to cancel all impurity laws. Will the other potentially revocable laws be held in place simply by a methodology of neglect? Cancellation or modification of these laws should rationally lead, with due diligence, to a wholesale and radical revision of what this splinter group considers to be the Law of Moses. Given this outcome, it is critically important that they establish the authority by which this may be done.
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Sorry to hear you are so backward as to believe a rogue character from a film 50 or so years ago gives you insight into understanding the general thinking of those in red states today. How ridiculous.
10:36: I live in a red state myself, and hear similar things every single day said by people who unfortunately vote. I picked the Ned Beatty character because these "modern" people who have come into their own once again are just like him. There just ain't nuthin new under the sun, buddy-boy!
I have a compliment for Gerald. If that isn't a face for radio, I don't know what is!
This guy looks like a NAZI prison guard….if he’s so worried about obeying the commandments then why doesn’t he keep the Passover at the correct time in the correct manner…?? Answer: because his god HWA didn’t either…
I do as well, and have heard nothing similar.
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