Imagine going through life placing your entire identity into a failed dead organization that no longer exists? An organization that has left a trail of damaged and bloodied people in its wake. A trail of untold misery for tens of thousands of people over the decades and yet there are the few that want to resurrect it.
Samuel Kitchen writes:
The identity we received, as the future bride of Jesus Christ, was the Worldwide Church of God. That identifies us SPIRITUALLY.Now with our ministers going out, after the death of the apostle, and becoming NEW CHURCHES, they knew how to behave like a Church of God. They were taught VERY WELL by the apostle of Jesus Christ! But by creating a NEW and SEPARTE CHURCH, they found themselves without Jesus Christ!The only tie to Jesus Christ, they have, is back through Herbert W Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God. As individual ministers and members REMEMBER what they were taught, they reconnect back to their ROOTS. But shortly afterwards, the connection is severed because of THIS SEPARATION. The idea of the necessity of a second or more church of God, is heresy. SO IT CHOKES THE WORD, and the Holy Spirit is constrained and quenched quickly depending on the individual.The more the individual REMEMBERS what they were taught, the more they go back to it, and reconnect to God. Eventually, if this becomes priority, that individual becomes ONE with the identity of the Worldwide Church of God. Because everything unclean, unholy, and profane is being removed, through a repentant mind seeking obedience to God, they identify more and more with the membership of the Worldwide Church of God, and by listening and supporting Herbert W Armstrong they are becoming ORGANIZED with Jesus Christ IN THIS CHURCH!!!!This is why some have attempted to control the flow of information. They want to control the collections and libraries of the Worldwide Church of God online, in order to direct the individuals to “other churches”. They continue to propagate the heresy that “another church of God” is acceptable, and that the Worldwide Church of God is no more and dead.They are like vultures, carrying away part of a carcass, feeding it TO THEIR YOUNG, pieces they've carved out.
10 comments:
Vultures? The ones I've known are better described as turkeys.
Herbert did restart the work after his death!
https://hwarmstrong.com/gycg/index.htm
As individual ministers and members REMEMBER what they were taught, they reconnect back to their ROOTS.
I REMEMBER that we were taught Monday Pentecost and the rejection of remarriage after divorce. I remember that the true church was the Radio Church of God, not the Rader-established corporate entity known as Worldwide Church of God. What should I do about THOSE roots, Samuel?
Kitchens needs to keep going back, go back and establish the Radio Church of God. But now he can call it the Internet Church of God.
One of the roots I recall from Armstrongism is that HWA, GTA, and numerous top ministers were very fond of creating straw men, ie reducing things or people in a given classification to a stereotype, which they could then attack to tar and feather everything and everyone within that classification. Many church members would stupidly repeat the resulting cliches to support and justify their beliefs, not realizing that strawman arguments are representative of binary thinking, a process in which the richness of a vast spectrum is censored or reduced to "I" and "O".
But, in this case, it's humorous to watch Apostle Sam, who learned well from HWA, as he gleefully attempts to reduce the entire ministry of current Armstrongism to the role of "Vulture".
BB
It's not very converted of Sam to call ACOG ministers vultures. How can he know what's in their hearts?
In fact, it was HWA who used the "vultures" reference in 1985 - describing people in Pasadena (at HQ, I believe) waiting for him to die.
Christ taught His disciples and crowds. The purpose of teaching is that one day the students will become independent. But in Armstrong-land, its members are eternal children taught to blindly follow shallow rules, just like elementary grade children. This is the world Samuel and many others hankers for. Following Christ also means leaving childhood behind, and becoming more like Him.
HWA did not have a tie to Christ. HWA had a tie to HWA.
Samuel Kitchen writes:
“The identity we received, as the future bride of Jesus Christ, was the Worldwide Church of God...”
******
The identity of God’s Church, that future bride, is found among 7 churches as described in Revelation 2-3, and is not solely some “Worldwide Church of God.”
The last church, era, congregation to make up that bride will not be some church in Philadelphia or some church in Laodicea, but a “church of the Laodiceans,” as though they were all scattered peoples...perhaps even scattered worldwide. There will be no 8th church.
What is some identity of those Laodiceans?
Revelation 3:16 “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
:17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
Naked? The hireling leaders appear to be so well dressed, like that Emperor without clothes, but are naked, exposed, so all can see them for what/who they really are!
Well, that sounds like what the former Worldwide church of God turned into. Are you Samuel still a part of that church? Hirelings of that former organization were wearing crucifixes around their necks, observing Christmas, observing Sunday in lieu of weekly Sabbath, etc., while other hirelings fled, leaving their ministerial credentials behind in Pasadena, to form some of those splinter groups you are writing about.
So, what is this Worldwide Church of God you have in mind?
Is it one that believes one can commit some unpardonable sin, believes that Jesus Christ is the God (Acts 3:13) of the Old Testament, believes that Jesus Christ will very soon return to reign on earth for 1,000 years and no longer be at His Father’s right hand, believes that very soon people will “learn war no more,” believes that salvation is not a free gift but is earned by works of self?, etc.?
Time will tell...
John
Post a Comment