The Philadelphia Church of God broadcast their complete utter hypocrisy really well today when they reposted an article from 2011 that Lil'Stevie Flurry wrote, The Sin of Idolatry - It’s more common than you might think.
That is pretty rich considering how the PCG worships Herbert Armstrong, Mystery of the Ages, the Book of Malachi, and the supposed prayer rock of HWA, which is now the new coronation stone that Jesus will return to be crowned King of Kings upon. Also, don't forget how they dance around this rock in Celtic pagan ecstasy in their stage shows that travel the Midwest paying homage and honor to it.
But seriously, how could we expect anything less, considering how Armstrongism has failed to look inwardly at itself and its actions over the last eight decades. That is why we are where we are today, an absolute shitshow of idiocy and blasphemy.
Lil Stevie writes in the very first paragraph:
Of all God’s commandments, the ban on idolatry might seem the most outdated. It must be for another age, many assume—when people offered sacrifices before man-made statues or deified the sun, moon and stars.
Notice this from Shane Granger of the PCG:
Shane Granger of Armstrong Auditorium talks about the pagan roots of Irish dance and how the PCG celebrates the paganism:
Riverdance is based on the story of the Irish people. The beginning of the show deals with the first settlers coming to Ireland and realizing the power of the land. This part of the show incorporates symbolic elements representing the sun, the moon, thunder, lightning and water. The stories and themes are heavily influenced by Celtic mythology. The second half of the show deals with the Irish people’s emigration to America. Scenes depicting Irish immigrants and African-Americans sharing dance and song illustrate the unifying power of these human experiences. The Riverdance finale shows how the Irish people have joined the various communities of the world while retaining their heritage through music and dance.Nothing like a little sun, moon, and nature worship to go along with the worship of Herbert Armstrong in the PCG! The PCG talks about Riverdance in all its promotion when it comes to promoting its Irish dancing members. The show has always had a great following regardless of the countries it has played in. It's a fascinating evening of dance all filled with one pagan reference after another.
Some of the lyrics of Riverdance include this in its opening act:
Out of the dark we came
Out of the sea
Where the long wave broke on the shore
As the day broke and the night rolled back
There we stood
On the land we would call home
Out of the dark we came
Out of the night,
The first of many mornings in this new place
When the sun rolled back the mist
We rose like a strong wave on land
Now we were the people of this place
What burns through through the mist?
What banishes rain and dark?
What makes the children straight and bright?
What makes the mountain sharp?
The sun is our lord and father
Bright face at the gate of day
Comfort of home, cattle, and crop
Lord of the morning, lord of the day
Lifting our hearts we sing his praise
Dance in his healing rays
From the 2014 article here on Banned: Are Philadelphia Church of God Elite Children Now Dancing to Honor the Sun - Their Lord and Father?
A little further down Lil Stevie writes:
Notice: “Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God. Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 26:1-2).
Keep my sabbaths, God said, and don’t bow down to idols. These were the two great test commandments for the people of Israel. Now why would God emphasize these two? Because these two, more than the others, were designed to keep man in the closest, most intimate contact with his Maker!
Gerald Flurry's teachings and Armstrongism are designed to keep people isolated from the Christ they all claim to follow and yet do not know.
He continues:
Now notice how the Second Commandment flows right out of the great command to put God above all else. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God …” (verses 4-5).
This commandment obviously forbids the use of any physical substitutes or aids man sets up in order to “worship” God. But what about the spiritual idols we set up in our hearts, as it says in Ezekiel 14:3? We may not bow down to physical idols made of stone, wood or precious metals, but our modern world is filled with idolatry just the same!
How can we forget Gerald Flurry traveling to Oregon, traipsing around the woods, begging the land owner if he could buy the rock, digging it up, transporting it to Edmond Oklahoma, positioning it in a garden for meditation and contemplation, then encasing it in a display cabinet on a bed of royal purple velvet, and then later placing it in the coronation chair used in their traveling Irish dance stage productions.
Idolatry leads to pleasure seeking which leads to wasting money on these pleasures instead of sending it all to Gerald Flurry and Lil'Stevie.
Pleasure-seeking also separates a lot of people from God—things like entertainment and sports or excessive television viewing. God’s way of life, after all, is demanding. Among other things, God expects us to observe His weekly and annual sabbaths, to tithe on all of our income and to seek Him daily through effectual fervent prayers and diligent Bible study. If we spend most of our leisure time pursuing things other than God, this might be an idol.
His article ends with this, proving once and for all that the PCG has failed miserably in its idolatrous lifestyle.
“Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry,” Paul wrote to the brethren at Corinth, well over a thousand years after Israel had come out of Egyptian captivity. He knew well that the idolatry command was not meant for some bygone age. It was written for us. Like the rest of the Ten Commandments, it applies to our time today!
And it remains, even to this day, as one of two critically important testcommands. If faithfully obeyed, it automatically draws us closer to our Maker!
Keep yourselves from idols, as John wrote to conclude his first epistle. Give God first place in your life. Make your relationship with Him more important than anyone or anything else. Nothing in this material life is as important as that.
12 comments:
''... God expects us to observe His weekly and annual sabbaths, to tithe on all of our income and to seek Him daily through effectual fervent prayers and diligent Bible study. ..''
Brazen indeed to assume God demands the tithe today on 'all of our income'- when such was not the case for ancient Israelites.
Very sad to see Philadelphians are another nutty version of Armstrong.
Odd to read the reference to Armstrong ''Every person has his idol,” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in his Autobiography. For Mr. Armstrong, it was an egotistical sense of self-importance—the desire to attain status in the eyes of his peers.'' Fact is this persisted throughout the vain apostles life it wasn't a thing of his past.
It is complicated to tease the concept of idolatry out of scripture. The first commandment states explicitly that, “You shall have no gods besides me.” (JSB) The semantics here indicate that this was a time when Israel believed in monolatry – that Yahweh was one god among many. The second commandment follows on the first. It seems to be focused on the creation of images to be used in liturgy. But that may not be the case.
I believe the second commandment is actually focused on the worship of other gods, carrying forward the meaning of the first commandment. Because cherubim were used in the making of the Ark in Exodus 25. So, images per se were not the problem. The problem is with images that are used in worship of other gods. (I knew an AC student who advanced the theory that images of any kind for any purpose were prohibited by the first clause of the second commandment. But this view may have been developed by taking that clause out of context.) The pagans did not think the idol sculpted from stone was a god. They believed it was an image used to venerate a god that was different from the true god.
So, is the use of this rock idolatry per se – because it is an object used in worship? Even if pagan Celtic dances are wildly performed around it. Objects are used liturgically all the time in Christian churches. They are not the object of worship but objects used in worship. So, can we say that this rock is an idol because it is used in liturgy (I think actually it is used in entertainment. Probably.). I don’t think we can. I do not think if falls within the prohibition of the second commandment for that reason alone.
I do think the use of the rock is idolatrous. But for another reason. It is an object used to venerate a different god from the God of the Bible. Armstrongists will tell you quite openly that they do not worship the same God as Christians and Jews (even though HWA on his diplomatic travels to the leaders of nations did not really bring this up – he played the angle that the Jews, Christians and Muslims all worshipped the same god with the implication that this was the god he also worshipped.) They admit to worshipping a different god. Actually, they worship two separate, non-coinherent gods who have functional bodies, are gendered, have racial characteristics and live inside spacetime. They are Bi-theistic. This worship of a non-Biblical god clearly falls under the prohibition of the second commandment. It seems to always start with the Doctrine of God.
Scout
Gerald Flurry's satanic imposter cult is still in decline. Perhaps they need to dance harder.
Maybe he needs to do up another rock or find HWA's old outhouse. One telling note, it seems that the most power hungry Stalinist like leaders of the former Worldwide ministers are the ones always crying out for more tithes, offerings, donations, wills etc but they are the same ones buying jets, expensive homes, building fabulous buildings but also refusing any public audits of expenditures
“That is pretty rich considering how the PCG worships Herbert Armstrong, Mystery of the Ages, the Book of Malachi, and the supposed prayer rock of HWA, which is now the new coronation stone that Jesus will return to be crowned King of Kings upon.”
The PCG members do not really worship Herbert W. Armstrong or his teachings. They just pretend to be following HWA and his teachings. In fact, they quickly departed from HWA's teachings and went off to worship Gerald R. Flurry and his own massive new heretical teachings while falsely claiming to be faithfully holding fast to everything that HWA had taught. The PCG is a satanic fraud.
This Armstrongist preacher wrote, “Pleasure-seeking also separates a lot of people from God—things like entertainment and sports or excessive television viewing.”
Such pursuits do not fall in the category of idolatry. The Bible very precisely identifies what idolatry is. Idolatry is using a physical object for worship which represents a god other than the true God. However, the Biblical definition is used hyperbolically and colloquially to refer to situations where someone is, say, a huge fan of Donald Trump. I know of White evangelicals who seem to have an unhealthy preoccupation with Donald Trump. (It used to be Rush Limbaugh.)
But a generic unhealthy preoccupation is not idolatry in the Biblical sense. If it were, Donald Trump would be the biggest form of idolatry practiced by many White evangelicals and Armstrongists. They seem to talk about Trump more than Jesus. No, Trumpism is more like the zealous pursuit of a sports team. Nobody believes that Donald Trump created the Cosmos. To some Trump is a hero but he is not divine. If someone thinks he is divine, that’s creepy.
Using the Biblical language of idolatry to refer informally to a preoccupation is all right as long as you understand what you are saying is rhetorical and not actual. And, certainly, you don’t want this kind of conflation to enter into pastoral work.
Scout
Note: The first and second commandments of the Decalogue accommodate the idea of a monolatry. Israelites at Sinai believed there were other gods. This is unpacked elsewhere in the Pentateuch as angelic beings who were given some control over the nations on earth. The understanding of monotheism came later in Israel’s history.
"Idolatry is using a physical object for worship which represents a god other than the true God."
It might be more complicated than that. Some historians have noted that the Nazis had a religious spirit. So did the commies. And the religion of the the West today is socialism, with the media acting as its priests. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, are more than just the Popes of these religions. They were like gods for their generation.
Dance harder? Nah. They ought to be getting into Irish rock n roll! Like Rory Gallagher. Jimi Hendrix was once asked "How does it feel to be the world's greatest guitarist?" He quickly replied, "I don't know! You ought to ask Rory Gallagher that!"
Before I left the PCG over 10 years ago I went to the performance of the dancers. I believe it was the David and Ireland performance (forgot the name). I was shocked by the audience being mostly LGBTQ. My family, friends and I overheard many racy comments about Ryan Malone, his liver Josh Sloan and gay members of the cast. All that are true since I lived in Edmond and dealt with members and ministers on a daily basis and saw things that went contrary to the PCG teachings.
It was one of the following sabbaths that Gerald Flurry in one of his regular rages said he was canceling all plays and musicals due to cost and things getting “out of hand”, whatever that means.
Of course we know that didn’t last.
So glad I’ve been out of that cult for over ten years now, ex members could write a book on all the BS we had to deal with.
Hell, I only read their website articles occasionally and I always feel like I need a shower afterwards.
Most of Broadway shows & ensembles have a high proportion of LGBQT members, just like many males in cosmetology & hairdressers. I guess old Gerald thought he was gonna create his own that would not be so....WRONG!!!!.
The Great Identity Theft
The fake christians in the PCG went along with Gerald Flurry's Great Identity Theft when Gerald claimed that he himself, rather than Jesus, was what Gerald called “That Prophet” of Deuteronomy 18:18-19 that everyone was supposed to listen to.
This tells you everything that you need to know about That FALSE Prophet Gerald Flurry and his ignorant followers.
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