Anyone who has ever been part of any of the Churches of God knows what happens with "loyal" friends when they start asking questions or leave the church. Those friends disappear so fast it is shocking. Loyal friends do not exist. You soon discover you have lots and lots of acquaintances, but only a few loyal friends, if any at all.
Loyal friends stick by you no matter what and do not care what some ministers say to do. Those that leave soon find that there are far more friends OUTSIDE the church that will stick by you than you ever had when in the church. That alone is a curse on the Churches of God.
Keys to Friendship: The Bible tells us that “There are friends who bring ruin, but there are true friends more loyal than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24, New American Bible, Revised Edition), and that true friends are supportive during difficult times (Proverbs 17:17). Jesus shared important thoughts and concerns with His friends (John 15:15). Real friends may not always agree with us, but they will tell us what we need to hear because they care for us (Proverbs 27:6, 17). The Bible warns that we need to choose our friends carefully because we are influenced by the company we keep (Proverbs 12:26). Abraham was a friend of God because he chose to obey God’s instructions (James 2:23; Genesis 12:1–4; Genesis 26:5), and he understood that friendship with the world would alienate him from God (James 4:4). If we choose to be a friend of God and Jesus Christ, and we work to build friendships with those we come into contact with, we can be lights to the world.
Have a profitable Sabbath,
Douglas S. Winnail
41 comments:
No friend, true or false can be as good as the friend we have in Jesus.
The end.
Doug Winnail said we need to choose our friends carefully. I agree. You will be sadly disappointed if you think LCG members are true friends. They are smiley faces but not true friends. If you are a member of LCG, put your mask on before going to church, smile, don’t reveal any personal information, and remember the person who pats you on the back will stab you in the back once your out of sight.
I'm not sure NO2HWA is reading Winnail's words correctly. It seems to me that he is advocating friendships outside LCG, friendships with, in his words, "those we come into contact with." That's actually a good description of Winnail's social circle which is much wider than that of most LCG ministers.
I've always had many more friends outside the Church than in it. Friends inside the Church come and go. My worldly friends are always there, even those that have moved away. We still keep in contact. When someone in the Church moves away it's like they drop off the face of the earth, even when I have tried to keep in touch. I have a couple of true friends in the Church, but the vast majority are simply acquaintances.
I think No2 read it correctly. In spite of cultivating friendships in or out of the church those church members you may consider friends are not real friends. They will be the first to turn their backs in you the minute they you leave the church. As members of the true church one would expect friendships to be loyal, but they are not.
No friend, true or false can be as good as the friend we have in Jesus.
This is correct. Our imaginary friends are the most faithful. If Jesus were present on earth today, many would be complaining that he was hanging out with drunkards and tax collectors instead of with them. But once he is gone, everyone can pretend that he is their friend.
https://ezinearticles.com/?Friends...Where-Did-They-All-Go?&id=158271
"I have to ask the question, where did all the friends go? The only time those who have either stayed with the new and improved version of the Church, which has changed its name to distance itself from its own past, or those that have left it for splinter groups that profess to keep the old ways intact, or those that have moved on to greener and more stable pastures, or the disillusioned meet is at funerals or in the final days of some former church friend.
Sad, isn't it? One has to be dying or dead to find out you had friends But then unless you were having an out of body experience attending your own funeral, you'd not know. It is more comfortable being friends to the dying (and dead) than the living.
When churches implode, as they do, friendships explode... Local ministers, who can have their own dictatorial ways, can tear friendships apart as well by causing "friends" to make choices and take sides in endless and stupid disputes or personality cults.
...
So when your church implodes, why do your friendships explode? There are several types of friendships built when we become a part of a church and their dynamics are all a bit different.
First of all, everyone in any particular believes that "we all have to be friends," because, well, we are in the Church. The common bond of similar or same beliefs is what constitutes the friendship. In any other setting, we would not be friends with most of these people as we would really have nothing else in common to hold it together. Thus, when the church implodes, the friendships explode, fall apart and are not salvageable. They are based on being in the common church with a common belief. When that falls apart, that is generally the end of your friendships.
If you leave the church in discouragement, anger or theology fatigue, you are now a seed fallen on bad ground. Those who you leave behind will read about you in Matthew as one of the seeds that fell on hard ground and when trials came alone etc, did not have the ability to survive.
The second kind of church friends you will cultivate are genuine friends that are friends in spite of church. You have the church in common. You met at church, but you also have kids, ideas and needs in common and develop a friendship outside of just church stuff. Your kids grow up together, make fun of the church and minister together, as do you from time to time and it's just normal. But if you leave the Church or the Church leaves you, they have agonizing decisions to make. If they stay, they might sneak your friendship but if the Church was still the main draw, they eventually will leave you alone, high and dry.
The third kind of church friends. Another group are those that may be somewhat like you in your skepticism and having learned more than the church would have wished you to learn from the whole experience. You'll have all the bitching in common about the past. You will have quality time living in, mulling over and analyzing the past, but when you tire of that and realize that your life is not going forward in the past, these friends will also dry up and blow away.
You may outgrow them and bring your life up into the present while they wallow in the past and you grow tired of it, or you may stay stuck, and they move on. Either way, the friendship will dissolve in time, as friendship based on sharing only a bad experience is doomed in the long run. You'll know the "friendship" is over when they keep sending you updates on the goings on the past Church, and you don't care. In the world of blogging and email, you may have attracted these types of friends because of your common disastrous experience, but you have never even met these people in real time and would not know them if they sat next to you. But you were friends, until you were
“LCG: Is It Possible To Have True Friends In The Church?”
In the so-called COGs, it is possible to have way too many FRENEMIES, that is, people who pretend to be friends but are actually enemies.
NEWS FLASH! I am sorry to interrupt this Post with news significant to the Armstrong Churches of God. According to this article, the Place of Safety otherwise known as Petra in Jordan has been evacuated due to excessive flooding. It is a good thing that God's people weren't taken there recently as their reward for watching and finding themselves worthy to escape the Great Tribulation as they would have been displaced from the flooding.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11576135/Desert-city-Petra-FLOODED-tourists-evacuated-freak-heavy-rainfall-lashes-Jordan.html
Richard
Any time there are deep philosophical differences between individuals, it causes friction that friendships often cannot survive. People move in opposite directions all the time.
When God failed to validate HWA in 1975, and I grasped the enormity of this, and left, I did not want to be around anybody from the church, and that included ex-members who only wanted to talk about how bad the WCG was. I especially avoided ex-members who were proselytizing their new beliefs.
So, drifting away is a natural process. What is horrendous is that a church would mandate and enforce the breakup of friendships and families. Back in the day, GTA used to refer to "false loyalties". That was his descriptive for members who placed loyalty to their friends above loyalty to the church and ministers. It especially irritated him and others when in the course of interrogations, members would not cave and rat on other members. There were a lot of ideas in Armstrongism which were and are both toxic and systemic, and made us cultic. This was one more for the list.
This friendships topic is complicated. We were often told that the people we naturally gravitated towards were people with the same weaknesses as us, people who therefore were not good for us. Many of the friendships in the church were unnatural and contrived to start with. There were definitely cliques and a caste system. Not all members were considered equal.
Everything dissolves with time. Even mighty empires.
No, Doug. Abraham was a friend of God because he BELIEVED GOD, not because he obeyed Him. Good old bible twisting, law keeping cog minister doing what he knows best...deceiving others to obey men. Sick, sick every last one of them.
I checked out lcg a few years back. It was like WW all over again, Iff you were in ww you know what I'm talking about!
I did meet a few friends in that small group. I left and joined another group. Here it is 6 years since I left, my friends and I still get together for lunch regularly. I don't think that the ministers would approve of it. Some of them get info and stuff from other groups, but as long as the elders, ministers and spies don't know. No one gets kicked out.
I answer to GOD and not Weston.
Prove all things, especially your friends.
Fake churches.
Fake prophets.
Fake ministers.
Fake church members.
Fake friends.
I have not seen true friendships in these church groups. I have seen way to many to count being thrown aside for a position, for climbing the ladder, for backstabbing, and gossip. After 30 years in the church me and my bestfriend left we did Not let the Ministry nor parents or anyone else RIP apart what we had. They all tried over and over again but my bestfriend and I are obeying God, rejoicing and thriving after leaving LCG. Not to mention that both of our families told us were No longer family because we have "fallen like Satan". š¤£š¤£š¤£ we know our Salvation is sure in Christ Jesus!!!
I grew up in the church. After spending over 45 years of my life in the cogs any making many friends over that time, and being ordained to various positions, I’ve been gone now, almost 10 years. I’m still waiting for that first call from any of my spiritual brothers and sisters. It’s really quite sad if you think to long on it. If you’re in the cogs, realize every relationship you have is gone once you walk out that door. It shouldn’t be that way.
Actually Abraham was a friend of God because his mind was very similar to God's. The obeying and believing God was the consequences of having a mind (ie, character and attitudes) like God's
DW, Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at 10:22:00 AM PST, said:
"...No, Doug. Abraham was a friend of God because he BELIEVED GOD, not because he obeyed Him. Good old bible twisting, law keeping cog minister doing what he knows best...deceiving others to obey men. Sick, sick every last one of them."
******
Excellent points regarding Abraham believing God, DW; however, the unbelieving hireling Doug Winnail, "fleeing from his WCG friends," of the former WCG still will not at this time get it?
Why not? Doug, a believer in Fear Religion, still strives to earn his salvation by his own works and wants his followers to be like himSELF, and boast about it.
Doug, you cannot earn points, meet Doug's requirements/standards for salvation, and think you will qualify to make it into God's Kingdom. You haven't yet even qualified. SELF can't do it.
But for Doug Winnail: how was it that Abraham believed?
"And what [is] the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power," Ephesians 1:19
God provided Abraham with belief in God. How? By God's power of His Spirit.
And God gave promises (Gen 12:2-3) to Abram a long time before Abram obeyed God, even laughed at God, because God knew how Abraham was going to be the workmanship of God's hands and accomplish God's will in his life! Abram qualified for nothing. God worked it all out. Acts 15:18 Hebrews 4:3
Why can't Doug get it? Might it be because Doug, driven by another spirit, believes in another gospel, and another Jesus, very soon to return and reign on earth from Jerusalem for 1,000 years in some kingdom that fails after Satan is loosed from the bottomless pit?
Time will tell...
John
When I left the church, not one single "friend" ever reached out to me. Not one. And I grew up in the church, went to camp, did all the usual social activities. Yet not a single call, email, anything, from anyone.
Same
This right here
Ain't that the truth 6:45.
What an evil comment that is 6:05. No wonder Jesus said to Christians for all time as a warning. "Pray for your enemies".
It’s hard to have friends if your competing with one another in the church.
Luke 20:46 – Beware of the teachers of the law.
Beware of Doug Winnail; he is neither a friend, a caring shepherd, or a skilled theologian.
By the leaven, vanity of the Pharisees, LCG burdens the people with the law, the spirit of which Pharisees like Doug cannot keep.
This vanity leads to failings in the friend realm and cause Doug to be a heartless shepherd of the people and a dull-minded theologian.
Doug teaches that one must “qualify for the kingdom” – become your own savior – seek your own righteousness – and thereby Doug exalts the law above Savior Jesus.
Doug does not preach that Jesus is our righteousness and way to peace with God, contrary to Romans 5:1.
Doug does not care enough about his people to lead them to the Savior; instead, he keeps them in a state of turmoil as they strive to obtain the righteousness that Doug keeps out of their reach.
Doug does not enlighten his “friends” to know of the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to them in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:7).
Doug never preaches that it is by grace his “friends” have been saved, through faith – it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Doug’s entire ministry demonstrates that he is heavy on the law while he does not preach grace and justification as he seeks to lay a law burden on the people which has broken many and damaged all.
Doug’s ministry has kept those he shepherds in the dark about the saving power of the Savior.
Prayer for the people of LCG:
Holy God of Grace and Mercy, help the people to test the spirits, to know if they are of you (1 John 4:1).
May they test the spirits to know if they preach your whole word about the grace, justification – the entire saving power of Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:18).
Lead these people out of the darkness in which the cross of Jesus is not preached.
Let them walk in the Light, to know true friendship; may they trust the blood of Jesus purify them from all sin (1 John 1:7).
In the holy name of Jesus, our Savior, we pray – amen!
I know how you feel 8:23. Only about 4 people reached out to me.
Anonymous said...
When I left the church, not one single "friend" ever reached out to me. Not one. And I grew up in the church, went to camp, did all the usual social activities. Yet not a single call, email, anything, from anyone.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at 8:23:00 PM PST
MY COMMENT: That's a shame. I know how you feel. They(the "chritians" in COGWA) ask my in-laws about us every sabbath, as IF they're meaning to call or visit, but they never ask for an e-mail, or physical address. My wife tells her mother to give them her phone# next time they ask, but the phone never rings. Hypocrites, all of them. My dad was in the "church"(WWCOG) for many years. He suffered and died at home at the ripe old age of 59. Not one "christian" ever showed up on his doorstep to see him, NOT ONE! So, I'm not sitting around and holding my breath. I wonder what they are going to say to Jesus at the Great White Throne Judgment.
The divine flood in Petra is just to chase the tourists out so that Dave Pack can move in when Jesus returns after his next prediction.
When I left the church, not one single "friend" ever reached out to me. Not one. And I grew up in the church, went to camp, did all the usual social activities. Yet not a single call, email, anything, from anyone.
How many did calls and emails you send to them?
When I left the church only one person tried to stay in contact with me. I literally spent my entire life in the church, these people held me as a baby, and as soon as i left i didn't exist to them anymore. I tired keeping in touch with my "friends" but i was part of the "world" now and they eventually stopped answering me. I was shortly disowned and evicted from the only home i ever knew after leaving the church.
I have no regrets leaving, I have been able to find meaningful and fulfilling relationships here in the "world", better than anything i ever had in the church.
While a member, I did hall preparation dozens of times. I spent many dozens of hours giving members a lift in my car. When I had a car accident and asked members for a lift to Sabbath services, they were offended that that I even asked. To the ACOGs, its members are just assets to be heartlessly exploited. All the love talk and we are your family claims, mentally blinds victims to the reality of what's really there.
The official line that you will be told is that it is God's one and only true church on earth and that you will meet true Christians with the Holy Spirit. You might naturally assume that you will meet some wonderful people at church and make good friends for life.
The sad reality is that you will meet many very bad characters in church who seem to have unholy spirits in them and will be lucky if you do not make some malicious enemies for life.
That is so true. People in ‘the church’ group you are in are people you just do stuff with I have realised after many years of being in a couple of them. Then when you leave, they hang onto those still there and ignore you like you are a disease. Now I have left a COG I realise I actually had very few real friends anyway. So it doesn’t make me too sad. I think they think if they snub you it will make you want to come back to the ‘family’. For me, by them doing this, it has solidified my decision to leave a heretical group and had the opposite effect of what they have intended by snubbing.
The friends I really liked in WCG were the ones who liked to drink beer and work on cars. These days, because of technological advances in the automotive industry, most people don't do their own work on their cars. I still do. But, it's complicated, so you really wouldn't want to have your beer until after the job is done.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
When I left the church, not one single "friend" ever reached out to me. Not one. And I grew up in the church, went to camp, did all the usual social activities. Yet not a single call, email, anything, from anyone.
How many did calls and emails you send to them?
Wednesday, December 28, 2022 at 5:36:00 PM PST
MY COMMENT: I think you are missing the POINT. I never asked about them week after week after week. That's being a real hypocrite if you continue to be sOOO concerned about someone, but you don't do anything to show them that you care, IF you really believe you are in the TRUE "church", and that you have the spirit of God. Oh, they were my "friends" when I attended. My wife and I served them a great deal, even buying food for those who needed it. If the "minister" found out about it, he would shut us down, and told us they had a "bad attitude", but he would not help them one bit. That's what they told us, so we helped them and told them to keep it quiet. The "spirit of God"? NEVER saw the manifestation of it, except in one individual. He died a number of years ago. He's the only one I know who will be in the first resurrection. His name was Richard Trowbridge.
Ooof. “Malicious enemies for life” made me think of my old pastor. :( it’s so sad. I try to pray for lots of good things and blessings for him.
When I joined a more mainstream church, I was shocked at how many people brought us food when we were sick. I had never experienced it before.
Gotta watch out for those pastors wives. They can be the worst.
Actually, you can have friends if you are a member of an ACOG. You just need to listen to and understand Jackson Brown's "Redneck Friend." It will provide you with the proper expectations so that you know what allowances to make.
The WCG was full of takers, weird personalities, and psychopaths, with a few truly wonderful people sprinkled sparingly throughout. My mother, the Mother Theresa of WCG, attended for over 30 before she saw the light. During those years, she was a one person social service agency. She fed countless hungry souls, paid dental bills, paid for car repairs, and outfitted at least two large church families with enough fashion-current and proper fitting clothing to get them through their school years. I think my mother desperately wanted to be friends with these people but she was aware that they did not have any social or emotional resources to draw from to offer anything in the friendship arena. Believing the same odd doctrines produced some camaraderie but was not sufficient for forging real friendships.
On the flip side, my mother was kinda in with an in-crowd whose husbands were ministers or worked in church administration. She was somewhat useful to the group because she had enough sophistication to make certain opportunities happen and her participation in some travel excursions made the group costs more affordable for others. However, she could never be a full member of the in crowd because she had an “unconverted” husband. My mother particularly liked a certain wife of a minister. This woman threw at least one cocktail party per year and my mother always enjoyed attending. That is until one year when this minister’s wife decided my mother needed to be punished. I don’t think my mother ever knew what she was being punished for. That year, the friends were all chatting about what they were planning to wear to the party and commenting about how much they were looking forward to the big event. It’s uncertain to me if these “friends” were aware that my mother had not been invited, as the they gossiped about the party. To add insult to injury, a day or two before the party, the minister’s wife called my mother and asked if she would come over to help her clean her house because she had fallen behind schedule and was soon expecting company. My mother went and helped clean this ugly woman’s mess.
I think that this hard lesson taught my mother that the church elites were also incapable of offering the friendship she had hoped for. From that point on, it was clear that my mother felt more comfortable serving the needs of the church misfits and no longer had interest in being with the church in crowd. Therefore my mother was not surprised when no one from this “church” kept in touch with her after she left, or during the three-year illness prior to her death. My brother ran into a church couple shortly after my mother’s death and they expressed their condolences and told of how my mother paid a major bill for them when they had an emergency and no where to turn. We have no idea how many lives my mother’s kindness touched, as she practiced true religion in spite of, and within the midst of, cruel and crazy Armstrongism.
Hmm sounds very familiar. My mother became a member in 58. After becoming a widow in 65, with four kids mind you, she became the ministers wives chauffeur during the week, taking them shopping, and so on because their husbands are always on the road tending to prospective members. Then she was railroaded into remarrying, which was hell on earth for her and us kids. Not long after the wedding, he became a local elder, and my mother embraced the elders life. They spent countless hours going to visit members who were sick or just needed counseling. We kids were abandoned virtually most days and left in running cars while they went to visit for hours on end. When the marriage finally ended, my mother struggled financially, and was a pariah because she forced the hand of the WCG legal department to get the marriage annulled. But through it, all, she stayed faithful, tithing, faithfully, giving offerings at the holy days and using our Social Security benefits, that was originally meant to be used for our college education, but she would support the church with it. Until her death, almost 6 years ago, she attended GCI, and still tithed at least 10% of her Social Security check. She was never offered any kind of widows and orphans support in over 65 years. Never thanked, or recognized, not that that is important, but would've been nice. The church is cold and impersonal. Never Christ-like, they divide and conquer, and take, take, take. They don't want true friendships they want your never ending money. I will premise this to say that I have a handful of the most wonderful, true friends that I met in the church. None of which are in the church anymore. Think about that.
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