Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away and families are preparing feasts for themselves and friends. Traditionally in Church of Godland this was one of the "good" holidays that members could partake in along with the world. Yet, typical of the Church of God, far too many church leaders also turn this day into another Debbie-downer moment for members. It really irks the self-righteous butts of some church leaders if their members spend money on themselves and do not give it all to the church.
That brings us to the Philadelphia Church of God and their latest article on Thanksgiving. Here is how they titled their article: "Thanksgiving and Repentance". God forbid if you have one day out of the year to not worry about church leaders lording themselves over you or having to feel guilty for having a pleasant day unencumbered by flatulence from your church leaders.
The article starts off with the historical aspects of the day of Thanksgiving:
In a proclamation on April 30, 1863, for a nationwide Day of Fasting and Prayer, President Abraham Lincoln said, “It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own 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.”
Mr. Lincoln went on to say, “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 has ever grown, but we have forgotten God.”
You can guess which part of this the PCG latches on to...REPENT!
The article continues:
America was richly blessed because of the patriarch Abraham’s faith and obedience. But President Lincoln recognized that America had forgotten God and needed to repent. What would he think of America today? Have we forgotten God? Does America need to repent?
How about you individually? Do you need to repent? What is repentance and how is it accomplished?
Before you overindulge in turkey and other goodies, make sure to put on sackcloth and cover yourself in ashes and get on your knees in fearful supplication, and then repent of seen and unseen sins. Make yourself as miserable as possible and THEN try and enjoy your meal all the while knowing in the back of your mind that you are a miserable worthless worm.
Romans 5:12 tells us that “all have sinned.” Jesus Christ is the only human to have lived a sinless life. That was necessary for Him to be the savior of mankind. But all other humans have sinned and do need to repent.
Christ teaches us in Mark 1:15 that we need to repent and believe the gospel. The gospel that Christ taught is the good news of the soon-coming Kingdom of God. Repentance is a requirement of being forgiven of sin. Without repentance, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God (Revelation 21:7-8).
Sin is what has to be repented of. Sin is the transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4). Abraham Lincoln realized that the war-torn America of his time was sinning and needed to repent of breaking God’s law.
Historically for a nation to repent it was led to do that due to the preaching of real converted men of God. Today in COGland we have no one like that either leading a church or calling the nation to repentance. Why on God's green earth would ANYONE in the world listen to today's COG ministers? Why would they listen to Dave Pack, Bob Thiel, or Gerald Flurry? All three of these blubbering buffoons believe they will be one of the two witnesses or God's official mouthpiece ushering in the end times.
The article continues:
A major fruit of repentance for America was that it abolished slavery. It wasn’t done perfectly, but America changed its ways. The nation didn’t just feel bad about slavery, it abolished slavery. That is rare in history! It is something to be thankful for!
God wants us to repent so He can pour out His blessings on us. Christ makes an awesome promise to us in Matthew 6:33: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
If we repent and put God’s will first in our lives, Christ promises that all the blessings we could ever want will be added unto us. If the people of America—and all people—would truly repent and seek to do God’s will, God would free this world from its slavery to sin.
Godly men and women, who by their faith set an example draw people into the church and repentance. Where do we have such people today? Is there a COG leader or even a member who is so devoted to God that their calling shines bright in them, so much so that people desire to know what it is and a called to rely upon the Christ they follow? Why don't we have COG leaders who do that today?
The article ends with this:
This Thanksgiving, be sure to thank God for all His blessings and seek to do His will. Even if most people don’t repent today, you certainly can. And if you do begin to live by God’s laws and stay in a humble attitude of repentance, seeking to do God’s will, then “all these things shall be added unto you.”
To help you conquer sin, request our free booklet How to Be an Overcomer.
All of you law-breaking Laodiceans had better get your acts together and REPENT! To help you with that follow us as we follow Jesus write info our free booklet and learn how to be an overcomer. Like clockwork, Jesus gets shoved aside with another booklet about law-keeping.
This Thanksgiving do you and your family a favor. Turn off the broadcasts from your church leader and don't read any church literature. Spend this one day of the year giving thanks to be free from church encumbrances. Spend money on yourself and friends. Enjoy a fabulous feast of food and even watch or play some football. Be free for one day of the year.
How to really enjoy Thanksgiving? Quit listening to phoney self appointed prophets & quacks like Gerald Flurry or Wayne Turdgeon. If you want to make donations send them legitimate charities that actually do good works and that give an accounting of their expenditures like Samaritan's Purse or the Humane Society.
ReplyDeleteChurch of God Eternal doesn't even allow their members to celebrate Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeletePCG ministers are just a bunch of turkeys.
ReplyDeleteThere you go again, making a mountain out of a molehill.
ReplyDeleteGreat Flurry.... want dont you lead the way and REPENT of your ridiculous prophetic claims , destruction of families, prayer rocks, jets, irish dancing ad nauseam.
ReplyDeleteLCG (along with others) has never moved beyond the model of "interpret everything through our filter so that the stupid members know what to think". Hence the constant poopooing and fingerwagging from self-appointed precipices (maybe more like manure piles in reality). They just dont know any other way to operate. And then they wonder why they can't seem to attract new blood in scores.
ReplyDeleteOf course I carry a certain amount of sadness into the Thanksgiving season regarding what my ancestors did to Native Americans. This is especially true when my Native friends wish me a Happy Thanksgiving. I like Henry Standing Bear's line in Longmire: "You mean Thanks taking?" Anyway, that's a personal thing and has nothing to do with the ACOGs.
ReplyDeleteHWA's WCG, and its heirs exhibit any number of nonChristian behavioral patterns, and members are encouraged to be separatists, mistrustful, and elitists above it all, and consequently, so often end up offending others, setting themselves up to be perennial special exceptions to the accepted rules and traditions, and unable to enjoy so many of the good aspects of human life. Not all, but certainly some do look forward to "the Germans" and their meathooks punishing those who won't listen to them, won't heed the message, or who make fun of them. As a group they tend to be calloused and myopic to the sufferings of outsiders, They are the way they conceptualize their God as being; just waiting to swoop down and punish. Their love is conditional. If their own family members are not church members, then in their minds, those family members deserve all the punishment that comes their way. Their own children are punished most severely when the offense disrupts the parents' slavish attention to their religious practices, and starts with a ritual for infants unknown to outsiders, called "blanket training."
We could go on and on about this, but the bottom line is that during holiday seasons, we usually get to see the worst of the bad fruits Armstrongism causes in members' lives. It is such a destructive and negative religion. Make no mistake, there are some who are not able to be corrupted by the prevailing culture of this faith, but those are ones whose previous background has immunized their consciences against having their behavior and personalities corrupted by Armstrongism.
The thing I am most grateful for at Thanksgiving time is freedom from arbitrary authoritarians who try their best to take our freedoms away!
"HWA's WCG, and its heirs exhibit any number of nonChristian behavioral patterns, and members are encouraged to be separatists, mistrustful, and elitists above it all, and consequently, so often end up offending others, setting themselves up to be perennial special exceptions to the accepted rules and traditions, and unable to enjoy so many of the good aspects of human life."
DeleteI would characterize it more as "ostracizing themselves from others", but yes, I concur with your assessment. It is always interesting to hear a COGlodyte list all the ways they've made sure nobody wants to be around them and then complain about it.
Gerald Flurry's STRONG DELUSION
ReplyDeleteThe Devil's apostate Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. did the Great Apostasy of January 1995 by openly throwing out of the Worldwide Church of God virtually everything that Herbert W. Armstrong had taught,
Satan had previously prepared Gerald R. Flurry and his Philadelphia Cult to take advantage of the betrayed and confused WCG people. Gerald went on to betray and confuse some of the WCG people even more.
Gerald Flurry claimed to be faithfully holding fast to everything that HWA had taught, but then actually started off by totally changing the entire commission of his PCG church from preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God to “warning the Laodiceans.” Gerald had fussed about every relatively tiny, little change that the apostate Tkaches had made in the past, but then went straight to making truly massive doctrinal changes of his own.
Gerald Flurry really appeared to be holding on to HWA's teachings when Gerald illegally reprinted HWA's last book called Mystery of the Ages, but then Gerald went on to edit and change it so that it would not expose his own doctrinal changes to what HWA had taught. Gerald wanted to pass himself off as a prophet leading the church.
Gerald Flurry insisted that everyone in his PCG cult must believe that HWA was the one who had come in the spirit and power of Elijah to restore all things like they had believed back in the WCG before HWA's death in January 1986, but then later added that everyone also had to believe that Gerald, rather than Jesus, was what he called “That Prophet” of Deuteronomy 18:18-19 that everyone had to listen to.
HWA had taught in his later years about turning the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. So, of course, Gerald Flurry had to come up with a “No Contact” policy to cut off PCG cult members from having any contact whatsoever with any former WCG people, including close family members, relatives, and friends, who could possibly warn them about what Gerald Flurry is actually doing.
HWA had flown around the world in the WCG's G-II jet meeting kings, presidents, prime ministers, etc. as part of the great commission to preach the gospel to the whole world for a witness to all nations. Gerald Flurry bought a jet too, but uses it to go to the Irish dancing shows that he now wastes the PCG's time, energy, and money on.
Gerald Flurry tries to make it sound like his PCG cult members are the only true Christians with the Holy Spirit among all the WCG splinter groups, but many of the PCG cult members are actually old sex maniacs, sex perverts, predators, and malicious liars. A satanic impostor cult like Gerald Flurry's PCG really does not produce any good fruits at all.
After the apostate Joseph W. Tkach, Sr., Gerald R. Flurry is the worst character that Satan ever sent against the Worldwide Church of God people.
My COG splinter pals kept shoving down my throat of how they say Tkach Sr. was God's instrument to "weed out" those not truly converted...the pals put my head in a vise forcing me to think of Tkach Sr. & his apostasy as the method God "used" to usher in the "prophesied" "great-falling-away"
DeleteGod apparently has used Satan to accomplish/fulfill many hard to understand situations & lessons of suffering &/or repentance, but I personally am sick of Satan being allowed by his "Boss" to encourage child molesters, to preside over holocaust(s), & I wish everyone would collectively call out to the Father & plead similar to how Abraham successfully brokered a deal at Sodom with the Father to spare more than otherwise would have been spared.
Cranberry sauce is not mentioned in the Bible. It is a sin to eat it.
ReplyDeleteIt’s that time of year for the PCG to gobble up your life savings for their own!
ReplyDelete"...that HWA was the one who had come in the spirit and power of Elijah to restore all things.."
ReplyDeleteA close examination of HWAs teachings reveals a hybrid of biblical morality and communistic doctrines. In fairness, most contemporary Christian denominations do the same, but it's hardly coming in the spirit of Elijah and restoring all things.
It's no coincidence that HWA ran his church along Stalinist lines and had the men wear suits looking suspiciously similar to Mao suits.
1:49
DeleteRe people believing HWA was “Elijah” and GF the “Prophet” I watched Waco and Waco: The Aftermath recently and it showed me how gullible people can be. For example, Vernon Howell aka David Koresh convinced his followers to believe he was the Lamb of Revelation that would open the book with the 7 seals. If you think that’s crazy stupid cause the Lamb is actually Jesus Christ well why do Armstrongists believe HWA was “Elijah” or GF is the “Prophet” when the former is said by Christ Himself to be John the Baptist and all Christians know the “Prophet” Moses was referring to is Jesus Christ?!
GF is actually “that prophet” referred to in Deuteronomy 13 who should be forsaken for leading Christians astray. Honestly it won’t surprise me if like Koresh who claimed he had God’s approval to marry young girls and have sex with the married women of his group if GF or DP or some other future Armstrongist cult leader will claim likewise and the people will think nothing of it. It’s only a few steps away from crazy to crazy stupid after all!
Cranberry sauce is not mentioned in the Bible. It is a sin to eat it.
ReplyDeleteCranberry sauce is a Satanic counterfeit of the blood of Christ. Those who eat it are mocking their Savior and are morally compromised just like those who take Roman Catholic communion.
Now how can we demonize stuffing, green beans and mashed potatoes?
I dont know about cranberries, but potatoes were definitely domesticated by pagans and not available to ancient Israel. Maize too.
DeleteYeah I remember reading online somewhere years ago about how the KJV translation was really a Masonic creation. One evidence it proposed was the substitution of corn for the Hebrew wheat throughout the Bible since corn is an ingredient in Masonic rituals.
Delete"Now how can we demonize stuffing, green beans and mashed potatoes?"
ReplyDeleteWell, green beans are phallic in shape and filled with seeds of life. Mashed potatoes represent Onan's spilled seed. There, solved that issue.
that's pretty bad you guys allowed the green beans comment & the Onan comment to post through, I've had it adiós ciao
DeleteNot an airport, no need to announce your departure. Besides, we heard things just like that in WCG. Nimrods testicles on Xmas trees, phallic church steeples...
Delete"Now how can we demonize stuffing, green beans, and mashed potatoes?"
ReplyDeleteWell, green beans are phallic in shape and filled with seeds of life. Mashed potatoes represent Onan's spilled seed. There, solved that issue.
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What utter disgusting atheistic Jesuit filth! Leave the Word of God and your minds return to filth!
Atheist AND Jesuit? Must be a very conflicted combination!
DeleteToo funny
ReplyDelete“ Well, green beans are phallic in shape and filled with seeds of life. Mashed potatoes represent Onan's spilled seed. There, solved that issue.”
This reminds me when GTA eas still around in mid 70’s and some idiot church member claimed the Auditorium pillars were symbolic phallic symbols. Ted went on to say this same guy was probably turned on by piano legs. Everyone laughed because it was so funny and yet so true.
Some cavemen cant see anything else in any object longer than it is wide.
DeleteWW ministerial conference I presume?
DeleteI always have to laugh when whackos accuse Tkach Sr of being demon influenced. The changes we necessary and long over due. Tens of thousand of people have been set free from heretical teachings. Being set free into grace is amazing.
ReplyDeleteNo matter what the occasion, you can always count on your local ACOG to drop and step on their little stink bombs! They need to learn that per verse does not need to mean perverse! That little separation may not have been in their original Hebrew or Greek, but is critical and so important!!!
ReplyDeleteAlright, I looked it up. Potatoes and cranberries are both New World crops. Pagan food!
ReplyDeleteCranberry juice is good for you, may remove your urinary infection.
ReplyDelete“Gerald Flurry insisted that everyone in his PCG cult must believe that HWA was the one who had come in the spirit and power of Elijah to restore all things like they had believed back in the WCG before HWA's death in January 1986, but then later added that everyone also had to believe that Gerald, rather than Jesus, was what he called “That Prophet” of Deuteronomy 18:18-19 that everyone had to listen to.”
ReplyDeleteHaving watched the series Waco and its sequel Waco: The Aftermath over the last few weeks now it boggled my mind how Vernon Howell (ie David Koresh) could get away for so long with convincing his followers who seemed to be otherwise good and decent people to believe and do absolutely crazy stupid things that contradicted the pure Words of Scripture eg he claimed to be the Lamb of Revelation that could open the book with the 7 seals—which is actually Jesus Christ! He also wiled his way to the leadership of the group by seducing the female leader who was old enough to be his mom! He then claimed God told him to marry her young daughter, which led to him being expelled. Later when he was in control of his group he would force all the married men of his cult to abstain from sex with their wives, but God allowed him alone to have sex with these same married women and to bear children with them!!!
So now GF has likewise deceived his followers to believe absolute crap that HWA was the Elijah to come when Scripture asserts it was John the Baptist; and that GF is “that Prophet” who in actual reality is Jesus Christ Who is the only One we should listen to not any other man.
I just don’t get it how people can be so deceived! It just demonstrates how we all are really just dumb sheep and the urgency for the Good Shepherd to come back so we’re no longer listening to hirelings and like little children, “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.”