Check this out on how loving COGWA members in England are with their Irish brethren.
COGWA had to close the registration for its festival venue in Ashbourne, County Meath, Ireland, on the second day, as 630 applications had already been received for a venue that holds only 350.
Over 600 of the applications came from the USA.
There are only two congregations in Britain – London and Kent, both in the far south-east of England – and the majority of the members have no desire to travel to a nondescript town in Ireland and learn about Irish heritage. A satellite venue in Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent is being hastily organized.
There are two important ancient monuments in County Meath:
Bru na Boinne is a World Heritage Site, containing burial chambers said to have been built around 3000BC. Several passages are aligned with the winter solstice.
British Israelites excavated the Hill of Tara between 1899 and 1902 in the forlorn hope of discovering the ark of the covenant.
Hill Tara is where Gerald Flurry thinks the Ark of the Covenant is buried and at one point thought he and Lil'Stevie were going to be able to dig it up until God revealed to him that a dirty old stone as in Oregon which was to be the coronation stone Jesus was to return and sit upon.
Also, Hill Tara is where our favorite self-appointed false prophet preached a sermon thumping his Bible next to the giant pagan phallus that he couldn't keep his eyes off of.
Hatred is a terrible affliction. Have you tried counselling? Do you stalk COGWA as well ?
ReplyDelete"Hatred is a terrible affliction. Have you tried counselling? Do you stalk COGWA as well ?"
ReplyDeleteThis is an equal-opportunity blog. If your COG does something stupid we will talk about it here and probably laugh at you. If you do not want that happening then don't do stupid things. COGWA isn't above criticism.
This story stands out as unusual in the history of Armstrongism.
ReplyDeleteIt seems haughty of the English COGWAers to reject the place where "God has placed his name" for their FOT attendance. Perhaps the disdain for the Irish site is rooted in old English sentiments of being superior to the Irish - yet in Armstrongism, both groups are God's chosen Israelites.
It's also unheard of for COG administrators to listen to and consider the preferences of the members and cater a solution to their preferences.
Have the people and leadership of COGWA abandoned the Government of God, as defined by HWA?
COGWA is about the least talked about large splinter group. They have a lot of ongoing issues with members and ministers that doesn't ever make this blog. This blog is very fair to COGWA and all other organizations. If the leadership of several of the splinters weren't such
ReplyDeletenuts they wouldn't even be mentioned.
This is a athiest two faced blog. It will all catch up with you one day. Who's really fooled by the fake names ?
ReplyDeleteWell, feel free to tell me what my real name is, 7:01, since you know everything.
DeleteCome on, 7:01. If you're not fooled by the "fake names", who am I? What's my name?
Delete701,
ReplyDeleteStop being silly. It's obvious you are wishing ill will on those Christians that simply disagree with your muddled version of armstrongism. I think you might be surprised when your false religion becomes apparent "one day".
Mike
Can you really say that about the English when registration was only open two days? Maybe it means nothing.
ReplyDelete7:01 has no cridibilty wince he cant spel atheist.
ReplyDeleteEvil heart.
DeleteCOGWA had a Feast site last year in Eastbourne, England. According to One Accord, it had "about 145 brethren from 10 countries."
ReplyDeleteIt had no site in Ireland. But that tells me the U.K. congregations are relatively small.
I don't know where COG News is getting its information, but normally spaces are set aside in North America for "assigned site" members.
I'd think there would be room for any Brits who want to go to Ireland. Assuming they do.
I have no desire to attend with COGWA or UCG anywhere, anytime.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a COGWA member, but I'd love to go to Ireland.
ReplyDeleteLook, there is a lot of stuff that people may not know. A church (not ACOG) that I was attending several years ago sponsored a young minister in Ireland. The man had a unique approach to evangelism. He suited up, took his soccer ball, and drove to a neighborhood park where he saw people his age playing "sand lot soccer". He asked them for a game. They beat the crap out of him because he wasn't from their neighhorhood. When he got out of the hospital, he tried again, and they beat him up again.
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard this story, it reminded me of how neighnorhood and homey-centric people are in East Los Angeles. Latinos do not wander from their own neighborhoods in E.L.A. without the same sorts of consequences. Tourists have been known to make a wrong turn from a freeway exit ramp in the middle of the night and to be robbed and worked over.
The Brits in this Feast narrative may know something that we do not. This may not be a tale of racism or prejudice quite so much as it is a simple act of survival, or avoidance af ancient animosities. The Feast may be a portrayal of the Millennium, but not everyone in Feast destinations is in on that aura. ACOG feast planners are most likely not very street smart.
The standards of both UCG and COGWA are quite low. It is all about numbers! They don't want to offend tithe paying parent(s) and allow rebellious teens and young adults to attend. The Feast of Tabernacles in some areas of the U.S. are filled with scantily dressed women, men with long hair and earrings, obvious tattoos on both men and women. These are just physical things. The character of some of these individuals is more than just questionable.
ReplyDeleteThe founding mother ship wss elitist and exclusivist. Members who really wanted to be there, but who struggled with personal or doctrinal issues, were often uncermoniously dumped and marked. Was this tough love, conditional love (unlike God's love), or was it all about control? It seems in retrospect to have been a flawed way to treat human fallibility.
ReplyDeleteIf indeed UCG and COGWA are now allowing those who choose to attend to continue regardless of differences, it could be a concession informed by the maelstrom members experienced during the Tkach reforms. In some quarters, the belief that if you act the part long enough, you become the part has great credibility. It also relates to one's position on who has the most influence and will triumph, the church or the member.
I'm not an ACOG member, but I've come to realize that much of the disfellowshipping which occurred in old WCG was short sighted, myopic, and unfair. I understand why people who prefer universal conformity might still consider that to be almost a "proof" of the "true" church, however. Any "new" way of treating various issues is viewed with great suspicion in Armstrongism.
Still waiting, 7:01!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 5:09 AM said...“The standards of both UCG and COGWA are quite low. It is all about numbers! They don't want to offend tithe paying parent(s) and allow rebellious teens and young adults to attend. The Feast of Tabernacles in some areas of the U.S. are filled with scantily dressed women, men with long hair and earrings, obvious tattoos on both men and women. These are just physical things. The character of some of these individuals is more than just questionable.”
ReplyDeleteThe UCG had lots of godless, wicked, and malicious people attending from early on. The ministers would welcome these perverts into the UCG, support them, and kick out the victims of their evil behavior for them. One totally godless Birdbrain who had raised his own children to marry completely outside of the COG scene would pester the old UCG minister to newly credential him as a minister so he could rule over the people and bring in one of his dirty old friends from the casinos.
It looked like this was the prophesied Laodicea era of the church that would need to end up in the Great Tribulation to get smartened up.