A memory from the past when Dennis posted this on Gavin Rumney's blog, Ambassador Watch
When the clock runs out…
1. I never said Jesus would return then. I said he “could” return.
2. God has given us more time to finish the Work.
3. Satan has blinded your mind. We never said that.
4. We said it, but we didn’t mean it the way you took it.
5. Satan confused your mind to make you think we said that, but we didn’t. We said something else and now I’m not going to tell you what I really said. You should have listened right the first time.
6. I only meant my books would go into a second printing and return to a bookstore near you.
7. I made a mistake, but so did Moses, David, the Disciples, and Paul, and they were all men after God’s own heart. So there.
12 comments:
8: Jesus is actually here now, you just cant recognize him , as its ME - THE CULT LEADER
Number 7 on the list says, "I made a mistake, but so did Moses, David, the Disciples and Paul and they were all men after God's own heart".
To that I say 2 things. First, none of those men EVER ONCE gave a false date for the return of Christ. Secondly, those WERE ACTUALLY MEN OF GOD.
This current crop of cog leaders are men after THEIR OWN HEART, or HWA's, NOT GOD'S.
According to Jesus, there were some standing there who would not taste of death before he would return. That is a failed prophecy! Jesus was a false prophet.
Jesus was not a false prophet.
You are reading modern-Western thought into the Bible - ancient-Near Eastern literature written with the thought-forms of the day - and drawing the wrong conclusion.
"Preachers and teachers should be hesitant to encourage people to read the Bible on the basis that it is "easy," a view which pays less respect tot he Bible than to other literature written in ancient times. The dimensions of the Bible which make it valuable also make it difficult to understand. It is historical literature, expressed in the languages and cultural assumptions of a particular age and part of the world, written from within a religious conceptuality often alien to us (e.g., animal sacrifice). Biblical truth is never general moralisms, or narratives that begin "once upon a time," but always presupposes the historical realities and particularities of human existence - and not "human existence in the abstract but the particular human experience of the people addressed in a certain time and place. This particularity of the Biblical message corresponds to the particularity of the incarnation and is an indispensable aspect of biblical truth. It is also what makes the Bible difficult for readers in other times and places to understand, for it requires historical study.
"Preachers and teachers who approach the Bible in this way often meet a sincere objection: "Does this mean that only those who have learned a lot of historical information and are quipped with historical method can understand the Bible? Can the sincere believer not find an authentic word of God just by reading the Bible? Is it really necessary to know about Roman emperors and he situation of churches in ancient Turkey to understand Revelation?" The objection contains an important truth, just as it fails to make an important distinction. Quite apart from historical study, the sincere reader of the Bible open to God's word can be addressed by the Word of God through Bible reading. We might well be grateful that God does not wait on our perfect understanding before addressing us with his Word. But this is different from understanding. We can be addressed, spoken to in a way that shapes our existence, even by that which we do not understand completely, as every traveller in a foreign country knows. But understanding, whether it be the language and customs of a foreign country or the message of a biblical text, is difficult and requires study. This is true of Revelation as it is true of biblical books as a whole...” (M. Eugene Boring, Revelation, Int., pp.45-46).
"According to Jesus, there were some standing there who would not taste of death before he would return. That is a failed prophecy! Jesus was a false prophet."
For 6:35 Please consider the possibility / probability that Jesus was talking about His return at the distruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Paul genuinely believe that Christ would return in his generation. HWA did not. He preacher 1975 in order to coerce God into returning that year in order to cover up the failure of Warsaw Pact communism. He threw thousands of his members under the bus in an attempt to pull this off. So much for his phony "outgoing concern" mantra. HWA was a commie ideologue through and through.
Yet he's still revered by many in the splinters.
6:02~ Your comment immediately triggered questions in my mind. Were you ever a member of WCG? Did you ever attend services, hear any HWA sermons, or even read the Plain Truth or any of the booklets?
I generally revile the man. But, I do it for valid, verifiable reasons. HWA was not a communist. The Israelis of today have an agriculturally-based co-op called the "Kibbutz". It involves equal sharing of all that the kibbutz produces, and direct participatory democracy. It is similar to the old hippie commune as sung about by the Guess Who in "Share the Land". It is not communism. HWA was a hodge-podge guy who "nicked" a lot of stuff from various sources, usually esoteric things which would bolster his authority and ministry. Some of his guiding concepts resembled capitalism, and some resembled communism. That is a mixture which is true of any theocracy. As an example, he was thankful for many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights which acknowledged freedoms related to his ability to conduct a religion, but not so much the rights of the individual who might participate in his religion. He wasn't very big on free speech, or due process, the right to vote, He wanted his members to participate in capitalism in ways that would benefit his work. He set up a system of authoritarianism for his members which modified the options normally available to them through the overriding system of democracy and capitalism in which we in civilized nations live. He claimed that his system, with him at the top, was based on the Bible, but that was a gross over-simplification, and exhibited many of the faults shared by any totalitarian form of government such as communism or naziism in their various forms.
There is no shortage of opinions regarding HWA, and for very good reason. He had a profound negative effect on the lives of every individual who became part of his group, and we are still all attempting to figure out what happened to us, and how he did it. There are those who believe that he was a shill for the CIA, and was funded by them. He came off as a Neocon in his views for current America, in spite of his prophecies and his belief that Christians were ambassadors of the Kingdom and should not vote. He was a man of so many conflicts, that describing him is not unlike the modern day parable of the three blind Chinese men attempting to describe an elephant. One thing is certain. He was not ever 100% any one thing, a constant that could be relied upon. You were right about one thing, however. He would throw his "dumb sheep" under the bus, or leave them naked and barefoot whenever it was to his advantage. He ran over people in ways that would have caused Jesus to weep. But, he was not a communist. It was more like he was an autocrat, loyal only to himself.
9:37---
The WCG , in the very least, was ran with a communist , central planned , economy.
Centralized planning, centralized money collection, a despising of any kind of feedback mechanism by the laity, non accountability at all levels to any kind of market economy. Failure was subsidized or hidden.
Just like communist countries will allow some capitalism in narrow areas, so as to benefit the state, the WCG let members earn money in the marketplace, so as to fund the inefficient operations of the WCG. Few realize that only about 20% of the budget of the WCG went for Gospel proclamation. Hundreds of millions were wasted on such boondoggles as the Auditorium, AICF deficits, dichondra, steuben crystal, jets, and all other manner of opulent expenditures.
The brethren , like in Communist countries , met at crap Beer Halls, Masonic Lodges etc, just like the peasants starve in the countryside of those Communist countries. In North Korea , Pyongyang is a scrubbed showcase, while outside of it is deprecation and poverty. Ambassador was the same way.
I think the NeoCon part of the WCG originated with the false US/BC theory and a kind of "manifest destiny" concept as a result. In conclusion--- The WCG and HWA wanted to have a "face" and image of worldly success and enlightened existence to the world , and manifested such in its marketing like the PT and World Tomorrow, but the shadowy world of membership was a whole different existence.
6.02 here. I attended WCG services for ten years, and heard HWA speak in person when he visited my area.
Equal sharing of all that the kibbutz produces is by definition communism. Your invalidating statement that "It is not communism" does not change the reality. And your direct participatory democracy has a name, it's called mob rule.
You claim HWA was not a communist. Judging him by his fruits says otherwise. He condemned Soviet communism because they would not let him play church if they prevailed. He railed against domestic communists for undermining the countries morals since this gets in the way of him playing church. But he NEVER condemned communist doctrines. Rather he embraced and projected them into the bible. For instance he taught the "give way" which is ownership by need rather than by production. Accordingly, he hid that relationships are two way rather than one way. How could he have missed this since the expression "one another," as in love one another, appears over 50 times in the bible. He ran his church as a tyrannical dictatorship just like the commies. Rights for members didn't exist. Other tell tail signs is the theme of church unity, which is also a commie theme, and not forgetting his "human nature needs to change" mantra. Commies use the similar "new man" expression.
Old WCG photos from the 1960s and 70s show all the men wearing the same dark blue suits and white shirts, which look suspiciously like the Chinese Mao suits of that time. And the military haircuts that the men were required to have since individuality was a no, no. And his "government is everything" rather than government existing to serve its citizens. It goes on and on.
The body of evidence tells me HWA was a commie. He was trained in free market advertising but embraced collectivism. Ask God whether He regards him a traitor in this regard.
I recall how in spokesmen club we were told that America needs to behave like a roaring lion on the world stage. I was struck by the hypocrisy of members being taught to be passive. So NeoCon lions on the world stage to keep HWA and his church safe, but members were expected to be like pussy cats.
Wow! If you ever happened to have a John Birch Society's office or headquarters in your neighborhood, then you must have assumed that they were Communists! Men in the church dressed and groomed themselves along the same lines as the John Birchers. And that wasn't communism, it was ultra-conservatism!
In certain ways, the WCG and HWA had socialist leanings, but they claimed Biblical references mostly from the Old Testament to support that.
If you want to say that HWA and the WCG were flaming a$$holes, you will get no argument from me! Autocrats? Yes! Totalitarian mofos? Most certainly. But I was not a communist during the time that I was a member of WCG, and I don't believe the ministers were either. They were ultra-ultra conservatives, and believed heavily in enforcement of their rules.
Re the debate over whether HWA/WCG applied Communist principles I’d say his compelling his followers to triple tithe their money and then give more freewill donations to him for “the Work” actually parallels in my mind the capitalist tax system in which Western politicians are paid outrageous salaries by the peasant taxpayer and use the public money for their own nefarious purposes be it war etc without any accountability only to screw us and our country over and over!
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