Psalms 91:7
4He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. 5Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; 6Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. 7A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. 8Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. 9Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; 10There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
YHVH-JESUS-ALLAH
Pick up....
Psalm 34:4I sought the Lord, and he answered me;he delivered me from all my fears.5Those who look to him are radiant;their faces are never covered with shame.6This poor man called, and the Lord heard him;he saved him out of all his troubles.7The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him,and he delivers them.============================
Psalm 22:1
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
Rome Destroys The Temple
70 CE
Train to Oblivion Germany
I Kings 18:
Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. “Baal, answer us!” they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.
27 At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
28 So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. 29 Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice...
But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.
The word "Holocaust" means burnt offering. It's a Jewish word. That seems to imply that the Jewish God is pleased by human sacrifices (especially of Jews). People who get their idea of Judaism from the OT are misguided. There is much more to Jewish writings than that.
ReplyDeleteAtheist Pastor Diehl, thank you for your sermon today. It is a sleeper like too many church sermons. Your 25+ years of sleep inducing sermons are still the same, only the topic has changed.
ReplyDeleteAgain, thanks for your extraordinary concern for the weak and downtrodden. :))
"God On Trial" 2008, PBS
Deletehttps://youtu.be/tD7v9phroGM?feature=shared
I showed this to a lady who was always complaining of this & that, then she had the nerve to exclaim to me, "how blasphemous"! (I did not make this movie, PBS did)
Many passages, taken out of context, can be used to support most anything people want to read into it. So often I hear people take a passage directed to one group of people, in a specific time period, and apply it to themselves in the modern world. We see what we want to see. Eisegesis, reading into the passage what we want it to say. A commonly misused quote is "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Context doesn't speak of a 4 ft. 10 person with cerebral palsy being able to become an NBA star. Being protected in a time of war was a conditional promise given to Israel, if they were obedient to God. Modern Israel is largely secular. God can give them victory, but it isn't part of a promise that they can claim today.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comment, 7:11. My last two years of high school were spent in a very wealthy public school district in the suburbs of Philadelphia, at a high school that was called "the country club". It was an awesome time in my life, because although still suffering the child abuse components at my WCG home which unnecessarily accompanied the rituals, at least the persecution at school totally ceased, because the majority of my fellow students were Jewish. So, suddenly, instead of being the pariah I was at my former high school, thanks to the Jews, I fit in as a normal, well-adjusted fellow student, and was no longer the butt of peoples jokes, or easy target. It became one of several golden eras of my life.
ReplyDeleteIt was one of my best friends, whose father was an internationally known heart surgeon, who told me about the Talmud. He described it as a collection of wisdom which accompanied the Torah. The Torah and Talmud, according to him, were companion works which contained all that we could ever want to know. They were everything. I never did study it, as we did the Torah, but it certainly registered with me as something that perhaps we ought to know more about in our efforts to keep the laws of the Old Testament. I was particularly surprised at how loose HWA was with the Kosher laws, as an example of my teen-age evaluations of Armstrongism.
Years later, in the Ray Donovan TV series, the first couple years had some very prominent Jewish characters. One of them was Ray's employer, a lawyer, portrayed by one of my favorite actors of all times, Elliott Gould. This character had a study group which was devoted to the study and discussion of the Talmud, and there were principles he applied to his life, relationships, and legal practice from the Talmud. It was amazing to me, because while I was aware of Christian study groups, it had never occurred to me that they would have a Jewish counterpart.
There is a part of me, years after I left Armstrongism, which still identifies very strongly with the Jews. In so many ways, culturally, I am more like a Jew and Jewish people, than a Christian. And I realize that this is based on the superficial ways in which we understood the Jewish faith. I love the wisdom of the Rabbis, and the freedom of speech and differences in opinion that exists amongst those who go to Temple. I am amazed at the overwhelming presence of Jews at the top of every field. I am glad that the USA is a staunch supporter of Israel. I become very angry when I read of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. I don't understand holocaust deniers, having seen the crudely tattooed numbers from the camps on the WW-II era of folks in our towns who were still alive and in their prime during my youth.
Leave it to Dennis to produce such an emotional collage. For any of us who were ever part of Armstrongism, from an emotional standpoint although not genetic, these are our people!
‘When and Why Faith Fails: The Silence of the Gods.’
ReplyDeletePerhaps then as Ecclesiastes points out Dennis, ‘the day of one’s death is better than one’s birth.’
It is so pointless is it not? Everything. For that is what underlines a world without God. Why? Why indeed?
We are but beasts and humanities history is written in blood. Why? Why indeed?
The tragedy unfolding in Gaza/Israel today has been repeated throughout history and in every continent on earth.
I remember a Palestinian surgeon speaking in the ruins of Beirut in Lebanon in the early 1980s, that this has been happening ever since Cain murdered his brother Able as he surveyed the destruction around him.
Ironically, perhaps Gods Silence is His greatest voice.
"How and Why.....": disobedience
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this is intended as a commentary on the Middle East at the moment.
ReplyDeleteBut it's curious to me that COGWA is keeping quiet about the unrest so far - other than asking members to pray for peace.
The monthly "letter" from Jim Franks for October has been canceled.
No "special edition." No prophecy focus. No blame-placing. Quite unlike what you expect COGs to do at times like this.
COGWA may not know what to say. Actually, an ACOG that goes silent when they don't know what's going on or what to say would be refreshing, Feastgoer. And, it's always in impeccable style to admonish members to pray for peace!
ReplyDeletethey just spelled it wrong...they thought it was whirled peas
DeleteFeastgoer said………
ReplyDeletePerhaps the reason they are silent is because they were blindsided, as many were, by this appalling tragedy in Israel.
Or perhaps it’s the realisation that the old paradigm of British Israelism just does not ‘fit’ into what has happened or indeed is happening in the mideast over the decades since ‘Gulf War 1’ in the 1990s.
The realisation that it is highly improbable that Russia would forfill the threat to Israel as the Gog Magog of scripture due to its inability to subdue Ukraine and the devastating consequences of its adventure.The list is endless. And Armstrongism has been caught with its trousers down and is floundering up a creek without a paddle.
Is it possible to know the haplotypes of Gog and Magog like we can of Israel from the Jews?
ReplyDeleteI bet they are not a match for Russia!
Magog isn't Russia. The Russians have never claimed Magog as an ancestor. They are the descendants of Swedish Vikings from an area called Roslagen. That's where the name comes from. Interestingly enough, the Finnish name for Sweden is Routsi. It's called that because the largest and most powerful tribe closet to the Finns were the Swedih Rus tribe.
DeleteCOGWA makes a point to say nothing. They are very careful. They don't even say anything in their sermons except "stick to the truth you've been taught". And, "we're special because we keep the holy days."
ReplyDeleteThey know if they went in depth in a sermon to actually prove a belief, several in the audience might say, "wait, that doesn't make real sense." So, they tell you to simply stick to the truth and discern the evil outside of COGWA. Basically, wanting them to remember the Truth they proved to themselves as teens or perhaps in their early twenties.
Hey, are any of the ACOGs into the "red heifer" thingie? A farmer in Texas bred some perfect red heifers, and sent 5 of them to Jerusalem in Sept. 2022. I'm kind of surprised that none of the ACOGs have prophesied that Israel will make a clean sweep with the war against Hamas, and also take over the Al Aqsa Mosque and rebuild the Temple.
ReplyDeleteDid Dave Pack have anything to say about the Red Heifer Sabbath in March of 2023?
Bob did :
Deletehttps://www.cogwriter.com/news/prophecy/temple-institute-has-potential-dates-for-sacrifice-of-the-red-heifer-could-be-less-than-one-year/
https://www.cogwriter.com/red-heifer.htm
COGWA and other ACOG splinters say very little or nothing for the same reason that Jehovah's Witnesses in their "kingdom halls" clap when it's announced that a young member has renounced college and decided to become a bus driver instead.
ReplyDeleteMembers that are ignorant and poorly educated are easier to control, and are less likely to question their church's teachings.
The JWs are brother and sister to the ACOGs. Studying one gives insights into the other.
And not forgetting, the JWs also ban birthdays. As their dissidents point out, the two biblical cases used to justify this, ie, king Harod killing John on his birthday, and Job's children perhaps celebrating a birthday, is guilt by association, and would never stand up in a court or law. Their real motive for banning birthdays is narcissists devaluation. They have to mentally shrink their members minds to make them docile. Goodness gracious, they can't have people thinking that they have worth.
It can seem odd to most of us who were forced to dummy down, but I have met some COG members who had such crummy lives prior to Armstrongism that church actually improved their quality of life. These were people who needed some structure in their lives, and additional education, which the literature and sermons provided. Many topics were covered that one would know nothing about in certain socio-economic settings.
ReplyDeleteMost likely, that is not happening today. It's yet another aspect of Armstrongism which was time and date stamped. Honestly, the proliferation of information available on the internet has exceeded what is available at church.
Church members who fall into in this general category have two options. Leave, and continue the education, building on what you gained, or stick around and remain confined and controlled by the circumstances.