Stay Focused on Our Mission: The lessons of history show that mankind and God’s Chosen People have drifted off course again and again. Adam and Eve made wrong choices that sent human history off in a wrong direction—due to Satan’s influence. Ancient Israel turned away from God and reaped serious consequences. Modern Israelite nations are following the same path. Jesus called disciples and raised up His Church to preach the Gospel (Mark 1:14–15; 16:15), warn the world of consequences of sin, and announce events that indicate His return is near (Mark 13, Matthew 24). The mission of God’s Church also includes preparing individuals to reign with Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of God (Luke 1:17; Revelation 5:10). To obtain this challenging and exciting reward, we must avoid being distracted by the cares and temptations of this world and stay focused on our mission (Matthew 13:10–23).
Have a profitable Sabbath,
Douglas S. Winnail
14 comments:
It might be nice to clean up N. Korea. And the plastic in the seas.
This has to be one of the dumbest things we were taught in the church. The fact that the church believed HWA would be at Christ's right hand and COG members be next to him is asinine stupidity. Considering the untold believers of Jesus down through the centuries who were better than HWA and any COG member negates their part of the body of Christ. HWA and modern-day COG members trump everyone else in history.
HWA taught that WCG members would reign UNDER Jesus the Christ. Why is Winnail now teaching that he and his LCG members will rule WITH Christ? That's arrogance, bordering on blasphemy.
If what ACOGs teach about the Millennium is true, then I would totally want to be one of the kingdom’s subjects — a human being facing a full life of paradise before dying and waiting on the next set of resurrections to become a God Being.
There is absolutely nothing attractive to me about ruling over cities and nations and districts and school systems and energy grids and departments of agriculture, etc., as described by proponents of HWA’s “World Tomorrow.”
I’m a simple guy, not caring about position in an earthly geopolitical government — unlike the mother of Zebedee’s children. I’ll be glad to accept beholding the face of God forever with perfect happiness and fulfillment.
I can just hear it! A couple of ACOGgers are fishing on a Sunday afternon, and are struck by lightning from a sudden thunderstorm over the lake. It kills them. When they arise and it is explained to them that this is the ressurrection, and as they receive their reward, their jaws drop in shock.
"You mean this is our only reward?" asks one, incredulously.
"Yeah, that's not what our Apostle told us!" says the other.
"Yeah, what a rip off! We were supposed to be God, and this is all we get?" exclaims the first.
Suddenly, a booming voice provides stinging reprimand: "Come on, boys! With all the common sense I gave you you actually believed that you would be Me as I am Me? Did you even read the book???"
HWA uses the term "reign with Christ" several times in Mystery of the Ages. Though at one point he also says "with and under".
God is trillions of years old, so claiming resurrected humans will be "as God is God" or reigning with Christ rather than under him, is ridiculous.
8:44 clearly never worked under a generation x management at a tech unicorn...... it is not ridiculous...... Especially not since God clearly creates according to agile scrum sprint principles (or evolution) as it is popularly known.
Nck
This Armstrongist preacher stated, "The mission of God’s Church also includes preparing individuals to reign with Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of God ..."
One of the themes of Armstrgonism is that salvation is do-it-yourself. Jesus has a role but all the risk is born by the believer. For each believer, salvation is in a state of suspense. It will not be known until the judgment whether any person, including HWA himself, will actually have qualified for the Kingdom. For Armstrongists, Jesus did not bring a message of good news but a message of brutal testing with a positive outcome in jeopardy because the Law of Moses must be kept in its expanded form. And, oddly, as far as I know, the many Armstrongist denominations are not even pretending to keep the entire body of Mosaic legislation.
Armstrongists are steeped in do-it-yourself. This is why the statement cited above will likely not even create a stir among Armstrongist readers. Whereas Christian readers will likely have an immediate uncomfortable feeling. The fact is, the church is not training people to reign in the Kingdom of God. First, he is making the Armstrongist error of equating the Kingdom of God with the Millennium. That is a separate topic. The Kingdom of God is here now. Jesus is the King now. Jesus has subjects now.
Second, the spiritual transformation that takes place in the life of the Christian is carried out by the Holy Spirit. The spiritual transformation is nothing less than Christ being formed in us. Armstrongists have replaced this with works righteousness, church government, authoritarianism and judgementalism - all denominational activities in the hands of flawed human beings. But that is how do-it-yourself works.
This is a big topic and cannot be comprehensively stated in a few paragraphs. But some statements, like the one quoted above, stand out as a departure from the Gospel.
Scout
8:44 I get what you're saying, but to put a finer point on it, I'd say God is not trillions of years old. He's not old at all -- not one bit older today than he was in the time of Abraham. He is eternal and ageless.
And the point is well made: we can never become "God Beings," because an indispensible part of what it means to be God is to be eternal, not creatures.
Time is something which was created for man. In our case, it's all relative to planet Earth.
God's body is like the human body in design. There must have been a before and then after for this to happen. So time must have existed before humans.
10:37
In his divinity, God has no body or form or shape. He wouldn't even be God if he had a designed body (a design implies a designer, and one can't design oneself).
Time is the measurement of change, from potency to act. So time only came to exist when God created things (because God does not change -- only his creation does).
He's not old; he's eternal -- necessary existence that gives all other things existence.
It's a mistake to think God, who always existed, waited a reeeal long time before deciding to create us. It boggles the mind to think of God as timeless like that, but it's necessarily true.
That is hilarious, 10:37, although I doubt that most will recognize it as the atheistic satire it is!
You're on a roll! Tell us another one.
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