Last week we had Living Church of God worried about the most powerful god in COGland and this week it is United Church of God's time to weigh in the all powerful one. With UCG though, they toss in the magicians, 10 commandments, mark of the beast, UFO's, Fox Mulder, and Simon Magus to keep their members fearfully looking over their shoulders. Reading their missive you quickly see that they consider all Christians outside the minuscule COG fantasyland as blithering deceived idiots who are easily entreated by big meanie Satan who is always portrayed as more powerful than Jesus.
Revelation 13:16-17 says: “He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”
The answer to how people will be misled and tricked is a remarkable thing to consider in this modern time. Deception comes from a direction most people wouldn’t suspect. Interestingly, this is precisely how Satan has worked to defraud humankind throughout history since Adam and Eve in Eden.
If you really want a test case in deception look no further than Church of Godland and batshit crazy church leaders we have today. No one could have ever imagined the agents of deception that litter the COG universe with the likes of Bob Thiel, Dave Pack, Ron Weinland, and Gerald Flurry. But then they learned it from Gerald Waterhouse, Rod Meredith, GTA, HWA, and others that spoon fed lies and half truths to members for decades.
Revelation 12:9 warns us: “So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
Satan the Devil has interacted with mankind in various and sundry ways since humans came to dwell on earth. As a result, in the garden of Eden, Adam was misdirected to disbelieve God. So now we have a world which largely rejects God and His word. Most churches reject the Ten Commandments and teach their parishioners they are done away and nailed to the cross at the crucifixion of Christ.
COG leaders have an absolute meltdown of Christians who say thee 10 commandments are not in effect today completely ignore this:
In the early times of the Church, Philip successfully preached the gospel in Samaria. He encountered Simon who practiced sorcery or magic. Acts 8:9-11 says he had, “Astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, ‘This man is the great power of God.’ And they heeded him because he had astonished them with his sorceries for a long time.”
No doubt Simon not only was a master at magic tricks which hood-winked the inhabitants of Samaria, but he had demonic help as well which helped deceive people. Jannes and Jambres used magic when they confronted Moses and Aaron in Egypt (Exodus 7:11-12, 22; 2 Timothy 3:8-9). Incidentally, a possible meaning of their names in the Hebrew is “he who seduces and he who makes rebellious” (Gateway Encyclopedia of the Bible, Jannes and Jambres). Moses performed real miracles by the power of God, such as making his rod a serpent, which the sorcerers with their magic and satanic help also appeared to do. It is to these events that Paul is referring in 2 Timothy 3:8.
Who are our modern day hood winking seducers in the church? Look at Dave Pack and his endless stream of failed predictions, or Gerald Flurry and his Irish dance/prayer rock/coronation stone, or Bob Thiel and his endless half truths and outright lies about prophecy, and his right to be a church leader and the manipulation of his Africa followers. Also, how can we forget Rod Weinland? This fool has a track record of prophetic failures longer than Dave Pack's current list. Plus, Ron Weinland is our only convicted felon leading a COG today (well, maybe we should include Bob Thiel's African evangelists here). Who could have ever imagined the morons we have leading COG's today!
Next, Simon Magus enters the picture along with simony:
When Simon (Magus) the sorcerer saw this power being used by the apostles through the Holy Spirit as being genuine, unlike the trickery he had used to bewitch the Samaritans, he offered to pay money to the apostles so he could have this same ability to bestow the spirit to whom he chose by the laying on of hands. The apostle Peter’s words were resoundingly stout against his request; he rebuked him and said, “Your money perish with you, because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money!” (Acts 8:20). The act of simony, or paying for position, is named after Simon Magus. He did not repent, and later in history he would play a role in the emergence of the false church of Rome.
The modern day version simony in the COG is tithing. People are taught that their salvation depends upon (which it doesn't). Buying their way into the kingdom, or as the great Led Zeppelin song says, "buying their stairway to heaven".
The guardian.com on June 9, 2023 published an article, “A whistleblower claims the US has alien vehicles. But where’s the proof?” The article states:
“According to the Debrief, Grusch’s knowledge of non-human materials and vehicles was based on ‘extensive interviews with high-level intelligence officials.’ He said he had reported the existence of a UFO material ‘recovery program’ to Congress and filed a complaint with the intelligence community inspector general. That complaint contained classified locations, program names and other data, the Debrief said.
“But in a follow-up interview with NewsNation on Tuesday night, Grusch said the US had also found alien pilots. ‘Well, naturally, when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots and believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it’s true,’ Grusch said. Grusch said there was a ‘sophisticated disinformation program targeting the US populace’ to suppress information on UFOs, which is a common conspiracy trope in the UFO community.”
Many feel the intelligence agencies are suppressing this information and hiding it from the American people. The effect is, the more it is covered up, the more it is discussed. Many are tuned into Sci-Fi and the old X-Files television series which often showed the poster above Mulder’s desk which said, “I Want to Believe.”It is possible the UAP issue, in the form of an invasion from space, could be utilized to fool people into believing Christ has returned and by this means the Beast’s one world government could be brought to fruition. It is something many might think could not happen, but it is a strong possibility.
The apostle Paul states in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12: “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”
Scary times are ahead for UCG members:
People will be swayed and deceived by unbelievable signs, and by Satan’s magic show will be made to believe. If they refuse to believe, the other option is death (Revelation 13:15). In like manner, the ancient King Nebuchadnezzar erected an image and commanded all to bow down and worship the image or be cast into a fiery furnace and die. Death will be used as a powerful motivator to submit to the Beast and what is coming (Daniel 3:16-18).
Tuck goes on to talk about how church members let people sway their lives, though he really means their people of the world since no real COG member could ever fall into such a situation.
People will be swayed and deceived by unbelievable signs, and by Satan’s magic show will be made to believe. If they refuse to believe, the other option is death (Revelation 13:15). In like manner, the ancient King Nebuchadnezzar erected an image and commanded all to bow down and worship the image or be cast into a fiery furnace and die. Death will be used as a powerful motivator to submit to the Beast and what is coming (Daniel 3:16-18).
Shadrack, Meshak and Abednego, as well as the prophet Daniel, set an incredible example for all those upon whom the ends of the world are come, to follow. When commanded by the king to bow and worship the idol they resolutely stated, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:16-18).
Our minds must be set, as Daniels friend's hearts were, to face the challenges we have ahead of us. Our love for righteousness and truth must be such that we would be willing to suffer and die for it if need be.
Real Christians have been willing to suffer and die for Christ for centuries, and still do to this day, but now COG member needs to suffer and die to support a COG minister or leader.
If your life is in upheaval because of COG leaders and ministers then remember this, there is another road you can take:
13 comments:
There they go quoting Paul again. Real Christians do not quote Paul. By his own admission he was fanatically devoted to persecuting the church. Then he had a fake conversion so he could infiltrate the church and destroy it from within by changing doctrine. That method proved to be more effective. He was a total heretic, and his writings show it.
I'm not a big fan of fear mongering either, whether it be by the church or the world. Both do it quite well. Of course, the church has adopted the ways of the world so that explains that.
The reality is, we are all fearful of something. Most of you wore masks, took the shot, and now will be quite content to give up your gas stove, gas car, eating meat, and whatever it takes for the sake of climate change. Then you will gladly give up your life savings to pay for our foreign aid bill for the wars that are making our politicians rich. You will own nothing and be happy!
This is not good, for these are but mini-marks, test runs, preparing us to take the BIG MARK when the time comes. But fear not! For those who believe the story, we know how the story ends. Revelation 11:18 states:
And the nations were angry (I wonder why?) for The wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they shall be judged, and thou should reward the prophets, the saints, and them that FEAR THEE: and shouldest destroy THEM (ouch) which DESTROY the earth.
We ultimately have a fantastic future, but it's that coming interim period that is worrisome. Revelation 13:3 says,
"and the whole world wondered after the beast". A conspiracy theory right?
It doesn't sound like that promised Star Trekian, George Jetson world is on the horizon. Perhaps it's time for the fear mongers and their followers to " fear"!
Angels are sent beings. They are not omnipresent and omniscient. God is. The ACOGs have always treated Satan as if he lived an existence which mirrored that of God, except he was evil and a mischief maker. Satan is only in one place at a time.
Much misunderstanding comes from teachers attempting to claim, or assuming that one knows all the details about the unfathomable or unknowable. We've seen this recently here in the blind repeating of the church's teaching on whether God has a body, or at least one that His entire essence is thrown into to centralize Himself as opposed to God's presence being with us.
When I was 13 years old, I was at SEP in Texas for much of the summer. Kids being kids, and loving campfire tales, one evening before lights out, one camper regaled us with a number of demon stories. These had much greater impact on the boys because in the church, we believed in demons. Some of the kids were quite scared. But, I remember a young kid from Arkansas, with his Southern accent calmly reassuring us that we didn't have to worry about demons attacking us, because we had God's protection.
But, later in my Armstrong experience, the ministers would ask questions which made us doubt that that was absolute, such as, "Brethren, what if God were to allow Satan to do to you what he did to Job??? How will you act? Will you pass that test?" There were other self-defeating speculative questions, like "What if God chooses not to heal you?"
Most ministers of other Christian churches taught members to trust God. They didn't place doubt in Him. If bad things happened, they would refer to our inability to know all of God's purposes, but to reassure everyone that so and so was with God now, or being used in a powerful way in their current condition. There is a subtle but fundamental difference in the timing and approach there. One destroys faith in advance. The other is a spiritually healthier way of dealing.
“The answer to how people will be misled and tricked is a remarkable thing to consider in this modern time.”
This preacher poses an interesting question. In pragmatic terms we must ask ourselves if there is a difference between Christian faith and common deception. We all have the capacity to believe. We have the ability to form intentions. We are intentional beings. But note that intentionality is not the same thing as free will. Our intentions may not be well informed. We must parse through what we know of reality and form a viewpoint. And what we know of reality may be highly biased and, therefore, without pure libertarian freedom. So, we have one person who says I believe in what Q (as in QAnon) says and another person says I believe in what Jesus says. Another brother claims to be a Buddhist. Where is the distinction.
Atheists would say that Christianity is just a belief system among other belief systems such as Armstrongism, Buddhism, Islam and Shinto. But Jesus says something very interesting about this topic: “For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.” The delicate phrase “if it were possible” is really a steel trap. Jesus asserts that the Elect cannot be deceived. Elsewhere Jesus says that you will know the truth and the truth will make you free – you will not longer be imprisoned by your own flawed conclusions about reality.
The conclusion is inescapable. There is a group of people, who cannot necessarily be identified by sight or denominational affiliation, who form the Body of Christ and cannot be deceived. And they are founded on the Rock that is Jesus. They are not Arians or Semi-Arians or followers of the Colossian Heresy, for sure. “Our minds must be set …” as if we are the source of our faith, whose author and finisher is Jesus.
Scout
The problem with the UCG is not that the people in it keep the Ten Commandments.
The problem with the UCG is that too many godless, wicked, and malicious people who do not obey the Ten Commandments go to the UCG to behave very badly while playing church.
So many of the so-called COGs are EXTREMELY DECEPTIVE FRAUDS.
The PCG started by plagiarizing the writings of another false prophet Jules Dervaes, immediately changed the commission of the church to suppress the preaching of the gospel, set up bums as abusive fake “ministers,” wrecks families with a “No Contact” policy, supports old sex maniacs, sex perverts, and predators, endlessly promotes and worships That Identity Thief Gerald Flurry, bought the copyrights to 19 pieces of literature from the WCG but edits and changes them to suit Gerald's own doctrinal changes, wastes everyone's time with Irish dancing, and yet uses HWA's name and photograph to pretend that it is faithfully holding fast to all of HWA's old teachings.
The RCG did a Bait and Switch scam by promising to restore all of HWA's old teachings from the time of his death in 1986 but then making truly massive doctrinal changes with the “Greatest Unending Pack Of Lies Ever Told.” Dave Pack uses his “common” theft scam that he claimed to have “restored” to steal virtually everything his followers have. For their financial support, Dave gives his Prediction Addicted followers a new, wrong, prophetic date guess each week. Dave initially appeared to get off to a good start by writing all sorts of literature, but then later ended up disagreeing with much of it and deleting some of his own booklets that he had written, such as the booklet that proved that Jesus, rather than Gerald Flurry or David Pack, was the prophet predicted in Deuteronomy 18:18-19, or the booklet that proved that HWA, rather than David Pack, was the one who was to come in the spirit and power of Elijah to restore all things.
The UCG quietly pretends to be carrying on with some of the old teachings from the past, without mentioning the WCG's name publicly, but the main tradition it wants to continue is the tradition of ministers collecting paychecks. The UCG would like to give the impression that it is full of sincere, decent Christians who meet in peace, but it is actually full of godless, wicked, and malicious people who go to church to do evil to others. The ministers choose to support all the evil behavior in order to keep the attendance numbers up, since the UCG people are basically godless. The idea that keeping the Ten Commandments is the way to show love to God and man got replaced with the new UCG idea that everyone should “show love” to all the unrepentant, unconverted unbelievers in the UCG by putting up with them and their bad behavior.
9.23 am, What's also interesting is the phenomenon of the "godless, wicked, and malicious people" as well as their passive counterparts, not being able to make a clean break by no longer attending services. I experienced these people while I attended services. They had given up on Christianity, but found it too painful to admit failure, so they lingered by coming to services. I assume that attending services gave them comfort and perhaps a vague hope that somehow things might change for them.
the acog churches sound like one fucking fun place to be going too now days. A real FUCKING COMEDY SHOW!
"Most churches..teach [law] done away .. nailed to the cross"
That's because it's what the bible teaches, using those words! (Colossians 2:16-17)
245
I don't know what Bible you are using, but the word nomos (law) appears no where in the book of Colossians. Nice try but no cigar!
This reminds me of another funny incident from the childhood of a young WCG teenager, me!
I had forgotten my Bible one sabbath as we left our smelly, decrepit rented hall. Saturday evening, unbeknown to us, a magician had rented the hall to put on his own show.
Sometime Sunday or Monday, he called our house, as I had my address and phone number on the owner's page of the Bible. Someone in the audience had turned in my Bible to him, and, thinking that I attended his show, he called to tell us he found it. His interest was piqued because he had assumed that I was into Bible magic, and wanted to discuss it with me.
My brother broke this news to me. Trying to be cool with the Armstrong shibboleths (you can't, because it's impossible!), when I returned from some errand, he said, "Hey Bob! Some magus found your Bible!"
Anonymous on Thursday, December 14, 2023 at 2:45:00 PM PST,
The law against speeding was NOT nailed to the cross.
Someone's speeding ticket that they got for breaking the law against speeding WAS nailed to the cross.
Is this blog the ministry of the spirit?
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