What Your Best-Ever FOT Is Lacking
Every COG sermon I’ve heard about how to have the best-ever Feast of Tabernacles offers the same advice: commit to serving others.
Be an usher!
Be a parking lot attendant (wave those orange cones)!
Help organize and decorate the meeting hall!
Work with the audio-video crew!
Join the choir!
Serve at the information booth!
Find new ways to serve!
But even if every attendant were to sign up for a volunteer position (cutting back on their COG’s expenses), at some point you will still hear a sermon or sermonette about how to combat “post-feast letdown.”
Post-feast letdown
After a week of joining others in celebrating the future thousand-year earthly reign of God’s Kingdom—the “World Tomorrow”—the mere thought of going “back into the world” is a downer.
Recently, an active COG member also confided to me that he always looks forward to the feast, enjoys it, but then leaves on an “empty tank,” feeling as if he had just squandered another opportunity for spiritual growth.
This is not unusual.
The problem
Despite what you’re led to believe, usually, it’s not that the feast is so spiritual that the contrast of going back into the world is a letdown. The truth is that, in many cases, “the feast” is indistinguishable from a feel-good convention, with its lineup of speakers, its organizational rah-rah cheerleading, its seminars (on all manner of topics), its entertainment, its stage bands, its fine foods, and its social activities.
What you actually experience is a natural letdown from a manufactured high.
A “good feast,” you believe, is one in which you make a ton of new friends and enjoy a full activity schedule. It might include skating, a family dance, pizza parties, go-karts, cookouts, singles dinners, couples dinners, ministers dinners, youth day, a movie night, raffles, site-seeing tours, beach volleyball parties, and other opportunities for fun and fellowship.
But the reality for many is that the feast is a very un-spiritual time, despite all their self-congratulatory talk about how blessed they are to be “called” to understand and keep “God’s feasts.” It’s a fun convention that allows people who were directly or indirectly affected by the Armstrongs to catch up with each other.
In short, you believe a good feast is a fun feast, a full feast—which makes for a fast, fatiguing feast.
The solution
Be honest: How many of you pray at the feast? I don’t mean just bowing your head after announcements while a deacon asks God through a microphone to “inspire the speaking and the hearing.” I mean deep, silent, personal, meditative prayer to get in tune with God’s will for your life.
I hope your experience is different, but when I attended COG FOTs, it never occurred to me to pray with any depth. Instead, after a full day of fun and noisy activity, I’d offer up a late check-in prayer at night as I drifted to sleep.
Years after my separation from COG culture, however, I began making “silent retreats.” They usually take place over a long weekend (maybe three days) with other men who come for the same purpose.
At the peaceful, scenic retreat house, we are all provided our own simple living quarters (no TVs, no telephones, no Bluetooth speakers, no wet bars).
We wake up early and spend each day not bombarded with sound system checks or engaged in chit-chat, but in complete silence. (Sometimes we all forget what that sounds like.) Usually, there are a few scheduled spiritual talks given by the retreat master, offering reflections on Christian teaching. Attendance at the talks is not compulsory but is usually helpful. If tired, naps are encouraged. The rest of the day is reserved for private prayer and meditation in solitude.
This can take the form of praying during an outdoor walk by oneself. It could be going to the library to prayerfully read the Scriptures, or to read books about the lives of heroic Christians who lived before us. It could be seeing Jesus eye to eye in prayer, examining our own life in light of the gospel.
We’re called to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect — how do we measure up? Where have we made the most progress, and where have we made the least? What’s our game plan?
We must honestly assess where we stand, realizing full well that God is never angry with our failures, but is always calling us deeper into the life of Christ, wooing us to come closer to him. While he is not indifferent to sin, he is patient with us. He is doing a work in us, and we have to let him. We remember the love with which he searches for and embraces his prodigal children.
The difference
It took no time at all to see how my annual silent retreats compared to the annual Feast of Tabernacles I grew up with.
With FOTs, time flew because I was having fun, and I hated going home because that was not as fun. I’d have to wait another year to hang out with my new friends at the pool party or arcade. It was a downer. Back to the daily grind, back to the salt mine.
But my silent retreats—I hardly mind when they’re over, because I’m rejuvenated. Having put aside for a time the daily cares of the world in order to refocus my spiritual life, I actually look forward to going home and living a rededicated Christian life. Refreshed rather than run down, I’m up for the challenge. I feel better equipped to live out my calling in Jesus.
My advice to feastgoers
My purpose here is not to dissuade you from observing the holy days of Leviticus. That can wait for another post. Instead, for now, I encourage you to observe the fall feast with spiritual intensity, and not as if it were “God’s Vacation Plan.”
Decide your priority ahead of time. Refuse the pizza parties, the volleyball games, the socials, the family fun shows, the singalongs—all the noisy distractions. “Just say no.”
In a word, you must get away and pray. Be still in your soul. Listen to the still, small voice of God in your heart, because prayer is never a one-way conversation.
You already took more than a week off from work and school, so use that time wisely. Take walks on the beach by yourself, accompanied only by the seagulls. As massive and powerful as the ocean is, teeming with life, see it as a metaphor for God’s power and might. As one created out of nothing, meditate on your life’s direction and purpose. Slow down to read and ponder the Scriptures—not just Leviticus 23, but also the Gospels, which reveal how Jesus fulfills all that the Scriptures foretold through its historical shadows and figures. He should be at the heart of every prayer.
It’s not going on a fall vacation that God honors, but a humble and contrite heart.
If you commit to seeking God’s face and his will for your life, taking time to silence the noise of distraction that surrounds you, and being persistent in prayer, then who am I to judge you? I have complete faith that he will lead your next steps.
But it will be up to you to follow.
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The COG Catholic currently blogs at https://write.as/thecogcatholic.
14 comments:
I was at the 1969 feast in (if I remember right) Squaw Valley, and survived!
Hello Darren: thanks for posting this article and caring for the people of the COGs.
I believe your advice demonstrates a spiritual wisdom and compassion that the people do not get from their own leaders.
Seems that the COG ministry offers more FOT instructions on eating and drinking what the heart desires rather than providing viable instruction on how to connect heart to heart with God.
I remember often hearing that not everyone at Church is in the Church. Apparently the author falls into that group.
My plan this year to have the best feast ever: Don't go.
You are not in the church if you are in Armstrongism, and there is no such thing as church eras. That was all Herbie's illusion, a mirage, a facade. How do we know this? HWA stated many times that it was because his church had the true doctrines and obeyed them, God had chosen him and them to gift with the correct understanding of national identities and of endtimes prophecies. For the past 50 years, we have known that he had absolutely zero understanding of prophecy, so since he linked the two together, that means he also did not have the correct doctrinal understanding which would have facilitated the correct understanding of prophecy. God did not validate HWA in 1972-75. That was a one chance shot. No one need worry about HWA or his church any more. Like the once mighty city of Tyre, It's already gone down.
You guys have got to do a lot of manipulating and spinning to continue to believe he was right. That's just not possible.
I have not had a post feast let down for over 25 years. That is when I left WCG and have not looked back.
Read this on the CARM website, which also labels the COGs as cults.
What does it mean to ask if Catholicism is true or false? It is a religion, but is it true? Does it lead to salvation and does it represent Christianity properly? Or does it have so many rules and regulations that it no longer fits within Christianity? Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church is not a true Christian church because it denies one of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, namely, salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Because of the Roman Catholic church’s teaching on salvation by works, which is rejected by Scripture with a warning, Roman Catholicism must be considered a false religion since it clearly contradicts Scripture.
Mr. Cog Catholic, did you leave one cult only to become part of another?
Mr. Anonymous (11:59):
Catholicism is Christianty. They are synonymous terms. Other, later, man-made churches that profess belief in Jesus have borrowed from Catholicism and modified it, rebelled against it. But Jesus built just the one Church that is still in existence to this day. (For the record, I do not consider Eastern Orthodoxy in the same category as Protestants — which include COGs, since we find their roots in protesting against Protestants protesting against yet other Protestants.)
It’s funny to see that writer say the Catholic Church isn’t true because it denies salvation is “by grace lone through faith alone in Christ alone.”
Yes, it is by grace alone, and ultimately through Christ alone. But faith alone?
The only time “faith alone” is found in Scripture is when it’s preceded by the words “not by.” As a Catholic, I’m obliged to believe that. (That’s not the same as believing in “salvation by works.”)
We Catholics can agree with “faith alone” only if we stretch the language to qualify what we might mean by that. But never in a way that contradicts Sacred Scripture.
I attended the 1969 Feast of Tabernacles at Jekyll Island, Ga. and I still have my Feast brochure with my written sermon notes in it - the same brochure that is photo'd on this post. It was the year the hurricane approached Jekyll Island and all 8,000 of us were taking cover under the world's largest tent. We could hardly hear Garner Ted over the loud winds and rainwaters from the hurricane's outer bands which pounded the tent that night. Light bulbs were popping from filling with water. My brother was on tent flab duty, and his one and only suit got soaked from the pouring rain.
Gary Leonard was there as well, although I did not know him. I still marvel at the fact that R/WCG could pack a tent with 8,000 people in it while a hurricane was approaching. No public officials told the Church to evacuate that I was aware of. In fact, to evacuate would have been a demonstration of a lack of faith.
Today, a larger ACOG splinter can only muster about 10% of the 1969 Jekyll Island attendance. Put 800 people in a tent today for 8 days and throw in a hurricane and see how many people flee to a place of safety quickly...and I don't mean Petra!
Richard
All the Protestant fathers (Luther, Calvin, Arminius) believed in the ancient teaching of salvation through grace alone, and that faith and works are synergistic. Its only a newer modern Protestantism that rejects works as part of the salvation journey. Most all the original Protestant fathers were favorable towards icons as well. The reformers were much more Catholic in their faith compared to Protestants today.
It's just bizarre how anyone can believe that Roman Catholicism is a valid form of Christianity. It's even more bizarre when you look into it's history, at how it sadistically tortured people to get them to "convert" to their form of faith.
Even today, the way it protects pedophiles and other sexual predators, supports abortion while publicly trying to convince us otherwise.
Throw in its support of the alphabet people and one can only conclude that it is of Satan himself.
Anon 7:40,
Unjust violence, sexual perversion, abortion -- these things are all sins according to Catholicism.
One shouldn't judge a religion based on its sinners, but on whether it is true. Rather than focus on its sinners, consider its saints who live the Christian life well.
You'll notice I don't bring up incest, adultery, and massage parlors when critiquing COGs, as much material as there is to draw from.
God will deal with sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance, whether the perpetrator is Catholic or Armstrongite.
Everything about Roman Catholicism contradicts the scriptures, so that is all anyone needs to know. Just stay away from that group.
FOT is like an 8 day manic episode.
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