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All Church of God members, past and present, should be dumbfounded that we have in our very midst the most amazing man that God ever imagined into being. No man has walked this earth who is more attuned to God and filled with such amazing wisdom than we have in our very own Great Bwana Bob Mzungu of Africa and his few Caucasians. Never has a more spiritually perfect man ever walked in the midst of us regaling us with profound insights into scripture and the Christian way of life. Even Jesus pales in comparison with our Great Bwana because Jesus spoke in parables while the Great Bwana Bob speaks the clear truth. No human has ever had such a divine connection to the Holy as our Great Bwana has with an inside track into how things ought to be.
Sadly though, incapable of having many original thoughts in his head, he has to copy and paste old Worldwide Church of God articles to prove how attuned he is to the truth once revealed to the old WCG.
This time the topic is prayer.
You remember the prayer sermons we had in the olden days of yore. The only way the god of the church was ever going to hear one of your pitiful prayers was if you spent one hour on your knees begging for forgiveness for some sin that you just knew that god was pissed off about. Long endless hours were spent begging god for mercy just so your pitifulness could be laid bare.
Even our corporate prayers were unable to heal Loma Armstrong because we were all spiritually backed up in our lives and that god was really pissed at us and the church. Though I imagine, it was probably pissed off because it had given Herbert many opportunities to take his wife to the hospital and get her blocked up bowels treated.
Anyway, these are some of the things Clayton Steep wrote that the Great Bwana copied:
Prayer is not an isolated and optional religious exercise. It is a vital factor, significant in determining our eternal destiny!
The supreme purpose that God is working out here on earth is the expansion of His Kingdom – His Family. He wants to make out of human beings immortal members of His ruling Family.
These must be individuals who, by their own free choice, come to fully support God’s way of doing things, who want to think as God thinks, perceive as God perceives, react as God reacts. They must want with all their hearts to be involved in whatever God is doing.
Such an attitude is essential in order to maintain, throughout eternity, harmony and peace in the God Family.
Talk about putting the pressure on church members! Don't pray the way the church expects and you will never be made into a god or goddess and be part of the divine family. Your godhood is at stake and the harmony of eternity is at great peril if you do not do so!
You also must always remember that you are nothing more than a test object placed on this earthy proving ground to determine your potential godhood status.
God has made us temporarily human. This existence is a testing ground so our Creator can try us and know what is in our hearts, whether or not He can trust us to live by His rules and laws (Deuteronomy 8:2). He must be sure. He is looking at us, closely examining our actions and reactions.
God takes note of what we say when we are talking to Him. Of course He knows our hearts and intents. And the Holy Spirit helps where we cannot adequately express ourselves (Romans 8:26-27). Still, as Jesus showed, the actual words we use are also important, and they ought to be meaningful, rather than vain repetitions (Matthew 6:7).
While not all of Steep's article is bad, the theology behind it all is. His article ends with this quote about praying for others.
One of Jesus’ parables was given to show us we ought to be persistent in prayer, that we “always ought to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1-8).
Have you ever “lost heart” because you, along with others, have been asked to pray for someone, for example, who is terminally ill, and the person dies anyway? Have you immediately assumed something was wrong with your prayers, with your exercise of faith?
Maybe there was. On the other hand, that may not always be so. Maybe your prayers were what they should be. Maybe you did not waver in faith. But maybe enough others did not pray effectively. Did you ever think of that?
In any case, do not lose heart. Keep at it. Try again.
Being able to pray effectively does not come overnight. It has to be worked at. But it is eternally worth the effort, for through prayer you get to know God. And, just as importantly, He gets to know you.
Were church members ever able to do anything right? Imagine praying for someone and then finding out that someone else didn't so God did not care to intervene. How stupid can our theology be?
Some of the most heartfelt prayers uttered to God are things like "Help!" or even "WTF, God!?!?!?!". Those are genuine brutally honest prayers, far more effective than the vain repetitions we heard in opening and closing prayers every Saturday at church.
There is little to no faith among most of the ministers nor in the laity, thus no healing. It is impossible to please him without faith, and those that come to him, must have it.
ReplyDeleteVery unfair guilt trip of Clayton Steep's that Bob reprinted.
ReplyDeleteWebsite announcements for a decade shared notice of his small handful of caucasians having significant numerous members passing away in uncomfortably quick succession one-after-the-other, & now the abrasive Clayton Steep article partly blames the church survivors possibly not praying "effectively enough"!
What a sour, heavy guilt the reprint article places on co-workers & members & brethren ALREADY soaked ENOUGH in grief. Only to have their minister heap more guilt onto the poor flock.
He asks them to question if they did not please God enough to help the sick & dying members of their church : "Maybe you did not waver in faith. But maybe enough others did not pray effectively. Did you ever think of that?" (enough "others"...probably referring the poor reader to include themself into "the others"). Or for you to assume some of your brethren don't "pray enough" & are negligent & deficient. What if they didn't fast?
That's like asking a veteran who survived & came home, to blame himself for the fallen. Onward Christian soldiers...oh, but if your brethren fall, you were possibly negligent in prayer.
If this minister Bob wants people to keep praying, why doesn't he ask them THAT...instead of making them feel worse than they ALREADY DO, as if they partly caused the grievous loss of their friend or loved one. What kind of "mantle" is that?
What if the dead brethren or their family smoked & wouldn't quit? These guilt trips are sick.
COGWA rolled out a new book Five Tools for Spiritual Growth during the Feast last year.
ReplyDeleteThe first tool is prayer. It analyzes the subject for about 80 pages.
It's loaded with scripture, with hardly any "guilt trip" language that I could find.
Oh thanks a lot! Now I'm feeling "inculcated" :)
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone here know anything about Clayton Steep, or the condition in which he had to live his entire life? I do not know the exact medical condition which he had, but as you looked at him for the first time, you noticed that his upper torso had a depth of perhaps 6 inches. About like a skeleton. I know he had a pleasant personality, because he was a substitute teacher at Ambassador College. He was known to live a fairly full life. This background no doubt informed his article on prayer, in fact I would have to believe that he was chosen deliberately to write such an article. Such an individual's prayers would be especially intense, wouldn't they?
ReplyDeleteok/ok/ok, good for Mr. Steep, but why is he posthumously enlisted to heap guilt on grieving folks nowadays after they lose friends & brethren, then get skewered with guilt that they might not have prayed "effectively" enough to "earn" healings for their ailing brethren?
DeleteOk 5:13, the term "abrasive Clayton Steep article" in no way meant that Clayton Steep himself was abrasive.
DeleteOnly the article, not Clayton, was abrasive when Bob used it now in the context toward heaping guilt on grieving brethren being asked to question whether they "prayed effectively" enough, or if their prayers were good enough to earn the healings they asked from God for their loved ones.
It was already assumed Mr. Steep was pleasant, informed, chosen deliberately to write such, & especially intensely prayerful.
The ones who are in grief & lost someone should not be asked if they "prayed enough" or to wonder if something "might have been" wrong with their prayers.
Bob's group lost significant westerners passing away, & any group usually has a few who are not "totally on board" with "every" little preference the leader has. Those few are likely being blamed by the leader for not "praying effectively" after lots of members passed away. He's accusing his own brethren for not saving his brethren.
I wonder if Dibar Apartian would have asked the surviving members if they prayed enough before friends pass from illness.
Heh, Clayton Steep. The worst WCG author I knew of. I don't know if the man preoccupied himself with the dumbest of topics or just phoned in a fair amount of work.
ReplyDeleteI think it is hilarious that the second we see the words "Crackpot Prophet" we all know exactly who it is.
ReplyDeleteHas Bob ever had an original thought? All of his stuff seems like a paraphrase or copy and paste of old church literature. For claiming to be so highly favored by God it's quite apparent God jiggled that spoon when he was pouring common sense into Bob's little head.
ReplyDeletehe's creatively watching the Nascent Sanhedrin's new portable altar made of concrete/unhewn stones which can strategically "bypass" the Al-Aqsa mosque flare-ups/fuss, & will be watching a possible holy place bldg. called The Cenacle
Deletebut he is poorly performing local elder duties & counselling amidst mountainous multi-tasking hardly meant for 1 man
the performance often ushers in significant despair & fatigue within laity
I am starting to think Bob is a Russian AI plant meant to deceive the people of God. How can anyone really be this stupid?
ReplyDeleteAll of his stuff seems like a paraphrase or copy and paste of old church literature.
ReplyDeleteThe novelty is that SquareBob SpongePants sometimes paraphrases Catholic and Mayan church literature alongside WCG church literature.
Thiel is ARTIFICIAL UN-INTELLIGENCE!
ReplyDeleteSo, when we use the acronym "AU", it doesn't mean Ambassador University, it means Artificial Unintelligence? Oddly, they end up being one and the same, anyway.
ReplyDelete"I wonder if Dibar Apartian would have asked the surviving members if they prayed enough before friends pass from illness."
ReplyDeleteI would hope Apartian had more sense than that, especially after his son put a shotgun to his face and killed himself in the Apartian's yard. I can't imagine the guilt that may have consumed them at that time.
was it known what the lad was upset about
Delete