Timothy Kitchen writes:
So church hopping cause you to have a spiritual DISEASE! When you're in one group, the spirits and beliefs cling to you like a man and woman having SEX. Then you hop over to another group with different spirits and different doctrines and beliefs and they cling to you once again. It is like a man or woman having multiple sexual partners. Here God says you'll get their spiritual STD! Is that what we want?
This logic apparently proves every spinoff group should have stuck with the old WCG, despite the changes. ONE true Church.
ReplyDeleteYet I don't think they're making that argument.
No joke, I was told this by Rick Stafford in LCG
ReplyDeleteFirst, I applaud Tim for his excellent word-smithing! I would say that he is becoming quite the cunning linguist! Unfortunately, in spite of those novel, evocative words, he's managed to get the science all wrong! Armstrongism, including every single mutation of it, IS the spiritual STD!
ReplyDeleteNow, I agree with him that church hopping makes it worse, because each mutation of a spiritual STD presents a different set of symptoms, and some of them are resistant to even the most potent spiritual antibiotics. Jesus Himself acknowledged the principle of potency in his mentoring to the disciples as recorded in Matt 17:21.
The best advice with regard to a spiritual STD is found in I Cor. 6:18. Jesus taught obedience to the spirit of the law, so certainly we ought to also flee spiritual fornication.
We'd be remiss if we did not carry the analogy to its retentive conclusion. However, it may offend some of our more sensitive readers here, or spoil the meals of those who read Banned on their ipads while dining, if I were to use the specific names of any of the common STDs. Please know that there is one such disease which if untreated, will cause dementia, mental illness, and ultimately death in its tertiary stage. If you believe you are experiencing symptoms or just worry that you may have been infected with Armstrongism, seek treatment immediately! Because symptoms include loss of IQ, and poor judgment, do not under any circumstances attempt self-diagnosis! If you happened, just now, to fixate on the last two syllables of that word (gno-sis), and are now paranoid because you believe one of the pagan Gnostics has written this, you are definitely infected with Armstrongism! Seek help immediately!
For those so inclined, do not under any circumstances attempt annointing with an oiled cloth, unless you can determine the purity of the oil. Remember the old Antiocchus Epiphanes scam, in which oils from porcine sources were offered as a substitute for the pure temple oil. Hannukah was NOT a Jewish conspiracy theory. It actually happened!
Yeah, I got a STD from Herbie's church: stealing tithe dogma. But now I'm cured.
ReplyDeleteI was told this by Rick Stafford in LCG
ReplyDeleteAre you serious? The same Rick Stafford who went from WCG to GCG, then to CGSF/CGCF, then to UCG, then to LCG? If splinter-hopping gives you an STD, Rick must have needed a LOT of antibiotics before arriving in LCG where he married the boss's daughter.
Remember that church hopping is only immoral if the peasants do it. It is always overlooked when the ruling class does it.
DeleteThe very one
DeleteThat different groups have different doctrines and beliefs is a wake up call to those in these groups to "prove all things" (1Thess 5:21), rather than sub-contracting out this responsibility to "Gawds ministers."
ReplyDeleteCome judgment day, God is not going to accept people's excuse for having bizzaro beliefs by claiming that they were blindly following the "true" church.
Btw, there's literal thousands and thousands of the one "true church" out there.
“Church Hopping Will Give You A Spiritual STD...Who Knew?”
ReplyDeleteWith all the sexual immorality in the splinter groups, you might get an actual factual physical STD.
Picking up one of the evil spirits that inhabits the splinter groups would be an additional booby prize for going to a fake church.
And that stupid comment explains why any of the groups are not growing.
ReplyDeleteAre the men of God to be found in the pulpit ?
What if I wear a spiritual condom?
ReplyDeleteWe all know this, but it has not yet been mentioned in this post. HWA changed his own doctrines over the course of his ministry.
ReplyDeleteLet's invoke the lesson of a language. While a language is spoken and being written, it is a living thing. It adapts to new discoveries, conditions, inventions, and social groups.. Languages do actually die, at which time they are frozen in time, and only studied. Take Latin, as an example. When Latin was no longer spoken, new words and expressions were no longer created to respond to innovations, or new slang expressions created by inner city Roman youth who wore their robes backwards and were into new percussive beats from distant parts of the empire. OK, so I got a little carried away on that one! Sorry! But, that could have happened.
There are those who say that the changes HWA made to his own doctrines are insignificant, just minor tuning corrections. Really??? If the disciples had counted Pentecost wrong as HWA had, guess what they would have been a day late for! Uh huh! They would have missed out on the Holy Spirit! And, I consider that to be very symbolic and revelatory about the whole Armstrong movement!
You can"t just freeze a living thing, like a religion, and turn it into something that is nonresponsive, something that no longer accommodates growth. The Jewish rabbis and wise men realized this as they compiled the Talmud.
What is the solution to this Armstrong dilemma? There is none! And, the reason there is none is Gamaliel. The splinters are most certainly in error with all the ridiculous changes. But, so also are the Kitchens for freezing Armstrongism and making it no longer capable of growth or adaptation. All the groups retain one thing they learned from HWA. Fear motivation. They invoke the tribulation, supposedly to scare members or prospects into submission. Don't they realize that coercing Christians into compliance destroys the whole idea of Christianity in the first place? It's totally unnecessary if goodness is flowing from peoples' hearts, and they wish to do right for the pure idea that it is right.
If the disciples had counted Pentecost wrong as HWA had, guess what they would have been a day late for! Uh huh! They would have missed out on the Holy Spirit!
ReplyDeleteAnon 12:58 PM is confusing cause and effect. Many people have received the Holy Spirit since its first outpouring on what we know of as the first New Testament Pentecost. If the disciples were "a day late" the Holy Spirit would still have been there for them. No problem!