Jim Tuck has this to say about Thanksgiving and being the true small remnant. Every single COG out there is a small remnant, in their own eyes, and are so special that God works exclusively through them. Who's right? Can you believe any of them?
President Lincoln did an incredible thing in 1863. On April 30 he proclaimed a national day of fasting and prayer! President Lincoln saw Americans forgetting that God gave us this land and every good national blessing! He declared a warning to America:
"It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God... and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.... We have been the recipients of the choicest blessings of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation ever has grown; but we have forgotten God! We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."
He called upon all Americans to confess the great sin of ingratitude and selfishness to God, and he implored the nation to repent and turn to God! Undoubtedly, God used Lincoln to save our nation at that time.
We are in much more serious trouble now than they were then! Anciently, God warned Israel in Deuteronomy 28:18-19: “And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish.”
When the ways of our peoples please God, and we sincerely thank Him for His loving care for us, He will bestow great blessings upon the peoples of the nation. This is true for the United States, or any other nation on earth if in our ways and prayers we acknowledge God is the source of all our blessings.
When the ways of God’s people please God, then He will bless us as a church and each of us individually. First John 3:22 says this to the nations and us: “And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”
The apostle Paul admonished the Church in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
We do not want to be counted among those who bring condemnation upon our nation for lacking gratitude, but rather we want to endeavor to be that small remnant who desire to please God. In doing so, we will express our thankfulness to God in our prayers, so we can also reap His rich blessings in our lives. Prophetic Times: Be Thankful Always
The big corporate Armstrong churches usually ramp up the "small remnant" talk when there's a split on the horizon. Is UCG about to shed a bunch of members?
ReplyDeleteThe CoGs express their profound hypocrisy every year when they celebrate and promote Thanksgiving, an extrabiblical holiday kept at the same time as countless pagan harvest festivals across the world.
ReplyDeleteThey insist that we must worship God only in the way he demands in the Bible yet gladly adopt a blatantly extrabiblical religious holiday. I’ve even heard some of their ministry gleefully claim it is based on the Feast of Tabernacles, a fact that should have them running to condemn it as a pagan forgery if they cared at all about consistency and integrity.
Only 8 people will make it to the place of safety. Just like Noah's ark. So there will be plenty of room for all those who actually follow God.
ReplyDelete"The CoGs express their profound hypocrisy every year when they celebrate and promote Thanksgiving, an extrabiblical holiday kept at the same time as countless pagan harvest festivals across the world.
ReplyDeleteThey insist that we must worship God only in the way he demands in the Bible yet gladly adopt a blatantly extrabiblical religious holiday. I’ve even heard some of their ministry gleefully claim it is based on the Feast of Tabernacles, a fact that should have them running to condemn it as a pagan forgery if they cared at all about consistency and integrity."
Looks like James Malm came back from the grave. This is the asinine stuff he used to teach.
COGs can't agree on which 1863 Abraham Lincoln speech to quote.
ReplyDeleteI heard a COGWA sermonnette in which the OCTOBER 1863 declaration of a Thanksgiving Day was quoted. Not the statement from April.
The problem is that Mr. Lincoln called for three or four special days during the Civil War - apparently to keep the Union together.
God's blessing for living by His laws is a benefit, but not the main reason for doing so. Christ gave the primary reason when He defended healing on the Sabbath day by stating that the purpose of a moral code is the preservation of life and the achievement of success. The ACOGs either implicitly reject this, or are mushy on this point. After all, ACOGs members are just chattel to be heartlessly used by their church. It's what exists beneath the Pharisaic veneer.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Abraham Lincoln, he wanted to end slavery and send all the Blacks back to Africa. He also destroyed the U.S. constitution, since the South had every constitutional right to succede from the union and Dishonest Abe had to usurp constitutional authority to keep them under his boot. But the victors get to write the history and choose the heros and the villians. No church should consider that pathological liar a hero.
ReplyDeleteJust sing from the purple hymnal and be happy.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDB8E-UAepo
Who's Jim Turk ?
ReplyDeleteThe Churches of God observance of Thanksgiving and Mothering day has always been a stark reminder of how it's one rule for America and another for the rest of the world.
ReplyDelete2:36 wrote:
ReplyDelete“Just sing from the purple hymnal and be happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDB8E-UAepo”
I despised Blest and Happy is The Man. One of the many horrible songs in the hymnal.
Jim's message seems to be "generic Christian" in that it does not mention British Israelism, promises to Abraham, or forgetting national identity.
ReplyDeleteAll of the ACOGs are small remnants of what they once were at this late date in Armstrongism. While Jim cites growth and financial blessings for nations which obey God, none of the ACOGs are being blessed in accordance with his cited standards. In fact, one could make the argument that they are being blessed on a more meager scale than are the USA and English-speaking nations. We point out why right here in our daily discussions, but really the reasons for that lack of growth probably have more to do with Gamaliel. Armstrongism was always "of men", was time and date stamped for the 1950s, and its decline is perfectly normal. Cults arise and fade on a regular basis. You don't hear much about the Moonies these days, either. Their main presence seems to be through their alt.right newspapers, such as the Washington Times.. Scientology has been on the wane for decades as well.
Decades ago, it appeared to me as if the voices on some of our national issues were so loud, inflexible, and insistent that any one of a handful of those issues had the potential of setting off Civil War II. How this was possible was a mystery until we entered the post-truth era, a time when the partisan talking heads care more about their agendas than they care about facts. In a sense, the ACOGs serve as a microcosm for this. They all want unity, but they want that unity in accordance with their way, and are willing to go to authoritarianism to enforce it.
Buckle up for safety, folks. Unless something happens to loosen up the thinking, and to get us back to working together through compromise, we're in for a rough ride. Victory of one party or the other is not victory for all. It is an illusion.
In fairness, some of the ACOGs teach that the splintering after HWAs death is a type of the USA following in their footsteps and becoming a splintered non world power.
ReplyDeleteTime will definitely tell.
Growers and Shrinkers
ReplyDeleteHerbert W. Armstrong grew the Worldwide Church of God to a relatively large size. It was the Philadelphia era of the church. In his old age, HWA had made it appear to be so easy to grow the church that many other people thought that they could do it too, and even better than HWA had done. Now, in the Laodicea era of the church, all these other leader wannabes are just splitting the church and shrinking it. They really are “wretched and miserable, and poor and blind and naked.”
The only reason that the United Church of Godless Men got as many people as it did at its start in 1995 is because former WCG people were wondering where to go after the apostate Tkaches destroyed the WCG with their Great Apostasy of January 1995. Yet the UCG started off by bragging that it already got as many people in its first year as it had taken HWA many years to put together. The UCG then went on to split and shrink ever since then.
The UCG tried to appeal to godless people to try to grow and collect paychecks for the ministers who had been terminated by the rapidly declining WCG. The UCG welcomed in outrageously godless sinners, kicked out their victims for them, and then proudly declared that “the UCG meets in peace.” This sort of godless behavior led to the big UCG-COGWA church split of 2010.
These days, none of the splinter groups are growing. They just split and shrink. The only time they grow is when they first start and can brag that they went from zero to something small. Then they get smaller.
Cool, brother! 'cept you forgot that there are no church eras, and HWA cancelled himself the first time he snuck into Dorothy's bedroom!
ReplyDeleteAnon, Monday, November 27, 2023 at 8:55:00 AM PST, said:
ReplyDelete"...Growers and Shrinkers...
...Now, in the Laodicea era of the church, all these other leader wannabes are just splitting the church and shrinking it. They really are “wretched and miserable, and poor and blind and naked.”
The only reason that the United Church of Godless Men got as many people as it did at its start in 1995 is because former WCG people were wondering where to go after the apostate Tkaches destroyed the WCG with their Great Apostasy of January 1995. Yet the UCG started off by bragging that it already got as many people in its first year as it had taken HWA many years to put together. The UCG then went on to split and shrink ever since then...
...These days, none of the splinter groups are growing. They just split and shrink. The only time they grow is when they first start and can brag that they went from zero to something small. Then they get smaller..."
******
That Great Apostasy of January 1995 seems so long ago. How time flies! That was some scattering.
I read an article of June 1997, which stated the following:
"...He gave His life for the firstfruits, for these sheep.
“But he that is an hireling, and NOT the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep” [John 10:12].
Do you see what happens here? Jesus Christ died for the sheep. The hirelings that He talks about are the ministry. Yes, this even includes Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Tkach Sr. as well. ALL of the ministers that you know and have known are ALL hirelings! NOT ONE of them is the true Shepherd. Only Jesus Christ is the true Shepherd [Hebrews 13:20]....
...The flock HAS BEEN scattered!
So, it really doesn’t matter if you are sifting in the Worldwide, United, Global, International, Philadelphia Churches of God, or in any one of the other offshoots or “stay at home” churches. YOU ARE SCATTERED! You did not want to leave the Worldwide Church of God, but you had to. You were driven out of the pasture into these other groups where other sheep, hirelings, and tares have gathered.
None of these are GOD’S churches! They are not the pasture. And, God is NOT inspiring or directing ANY one of their leaders...
....The wolf came and forced the flock and the hirelings to scatter in all directions. The best anyone could do under the circumstances was to try to join with others that also scattered and hang on to what they believed to be right.
The bottom line is that YOU left the pasture. You had to. You had NO choice but to leave. God said it would be this way near the end of the seven churches.
Let’s continue reading in John 10.
“The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth NOT for the sheep” [v. 13].
These are the ones that you followed. Remember that unless, of course, you want to call God a liar! This IS the inspired word of God. YOU FOLLOWED THE HIRELINGS!
You are going to find out that you did NOT have any choice in the matter. This prophecy had to be fulfilled..."
Today is 29 Nov 2023. Doug Winnail, and other hirelings of the former WCG, are still seeking "another Jesus" to very soon return to reign on earth for 1,000 years. Others believe one needs to do something to qualify to enter the Kingdom of God. And still some still believe there are church eras, and perhaps most do not believe in church eras.
Jesus Christ, among other things, was a prophet. How accurate was Jesus Christ with His prophetic words in John 10 regarding His Father's scattered Church?
Life goes on and time will tell...
John
Jim Tuck is the Worldwide minister who disfellowshipped me in 1985. One of the greatest blessings of my life!
ReplyDeleteDisfellowshipped who, 2:14 pm? Miller or Lonnie? If you speak for both, you put your sins beside his name.
ReplyDelete2:20, why would Lincoln want to send the blacks back to Africa if he was against slavery? Why not just leave them there or order the south to send them back?
As for the constitutional right to secede is that a good thing, considering that the north and south are brethren? It was the south who started the war.