Anyone who has been part of a Church of God for even a small amout of time will have heard numerous sermons on "qualifying" or read countless articles exhorting you to make sure you are doing all kinds of things in order to "qualify" yourself before their angry god snuffs says you out or says you arent allowed into their kingdom.
I found this quote below the other day while surfing some of the COG websites. When I copied it for a later post, I forgot to write which group it is from. It really doesn't matter who wrote it because this is standard COG thinking, and like most other things, the demands of it are totally wrong.
For one to enter the kingdom of God one must qualify! Just like Jesus Christ had to qualify! We must qualify before God can trust us to run & rule his universe and his kingdom. The same as when we are called it into God's Church we must prove to God upon repentance of turning from our own selfish way and walking and living God's way of life! In repenting we are qualifying! Qualifying to receive the Holy Spirit! For the terms for receiving the Holy Spirit is to repent and to believe. If we do not repent through the action of turning around and no longer walking our own way but now walking according to God's way, the Holy Spirit cannot dwell within us. Upon repentance then upon believing God's word you have been qualified yourself to be baptized and to receive the holy spirit of God! So ask yourself this, are you turning to God and repenting of walking contrary to his way everyday? One way we can disqualify ourselves is by not repenting! God's way is not our way! The natural mind as mr. Armstrong has taught is hostile to God's way of life! That is what the Bible teaches! So one way to disqualify ourselves is to go on thinking and walking in our own ways! According to what we think is right because we agreed with God. Simon magus believed the gospel. But he did not want to stop his own way to turn around and start obeying God! He did not want to repent! What about you question mark what about me? Do we study God's word just to make us to feel good about ourselves? Or are we seeking to obey God and to walk in all his ways? Constantly repenting of any change of course? Are we daily qualifying so that God may give us the Holy Spirit everyday? Or is it just one day a week type of thing? You won't enter the kingdom of God will be in just a Saturday church goer! We must be qualifying and all the booklets and all the sermons and writings of God's chosen apostle and his church are there to help! What the worldwide Church of God preaches and teaches is a very Living Word of God! Those very words in your Bible are words of life and words of spirit as Christ has said. They are for us and for our learning. The purpose of God's Ministry is to build up and to edify the Church of God. And that is being done by and through the holy spirit of God in the membership! If you attend some other church and listen to a minister that is not teaching exactly what Christ gave to the apostles then you will receive another spirit and another gospel and you will follow another Christ as Paul warns! So are we qualifying? Are we repenting and turning to God without whole heart? Are we obeying God and all things? If you are led by the holy spirit daily God will lead you! And then you will be called the people of God and then you will be a part of the Church of God.
Basic Christianity understands that Jesus does not call the qualified; rather, he qualifies the called. Calling the unqualified has always been God’s specialty. We can look to the heroes of the Christian faith—David, Solomon, Joseph, Esther, Ruth, Moses, Miriam, Deborah, Lydia, and the list goes on.
Sadly, Armstrongism valued works over Jesus. The law trumped everything, and that is why Jesus was not discussed all that much, and when he was, he was constantly angry about something, and lo, we had better get our act together if we expected to rule with him.
Members were seldom told to to step out in faith, embracing Jesus' calling and trusting him to guide us every step of the way.
My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1
We may not be worthy or feel worthy, but there is only one who is truly worthy, and that is Jesus Christ. Revelation 1:17-18.
He saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which has now been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” 2 Timothy 9-1
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30 Living Bible
The Message says it best in more contemporary terms, especially those burdened down by Armstrongism:
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. Matthew 11:28-30
43 comments:
The notion that the purpose of life is to develop perfect righteous character was taught to me as the new convert in this alleged one true church. Try harder and harder making sure to fast often, else 'you just won't make it brethren'. You are right, this is the epitome of salvation by works.
I couldn't read it beyond the first couple of lines. The inanity of the Cogs has surpassed my tolerance threshold.
The most excruciating position into which a human can be placed is a perpetual state of limbo, contant jeopardy. Armstrongism was not a peaceful, loving, nurturing religion. Herbert Armstrong's personality and managerial style deliberately shifted his members off balance, constantly placing them on edge.
I hate to say it, but if Armstrongism and the Lake of Fire were the only two choices, the Lake of Fire would be the choice which left you at eternal peace.
BB
The first seven sentences are the biggest load of bullshit from a church I have ever read!
This has always been an issue with me in COGs, at least subconsciously. It was unsettling, because how can we know that we've "qualified" at any given moment? It's discouraging and frightful since we all know we're a work in progress, and not many of us will reach perfection before death. So how good is good enough to squeak by and avoid the lake of fire?
Even though it can still affect me today, when I stop to think about it, I can have confidence in God's mercy. It's one thing to die without first having repented of any serious sins (that we knowingly and freely committed); we should be scared of that. But we don't need to be afraid of hell for our imperfections or "lesser" sins, even though we must never give up working on them.
We should work to make progress in our spiritual lives -- not to "make it into the kingdom" by some unknowable metric, but because we love Jesus and are not fully settled until we are perfected. And we can enjoy the process.
Understanding things like mortal sin, venial sin, purgatory, and the sacrament of confession (i.e., reconciliation) has given me peace. Not a false, easy, self-deluding, make-believe peace, but the peace that comes from seeing things as they are.
Going the COG route, I'd worry I didn't "study" enough, or didn't repent hard enough or with enough tears (the way GTA acted like we should), etc. Those "sins," I feared, would keep me out of the "World Tomorrow."
I am so glad God called me out of that mess.
Reading this leaves me lost for words. It is simply contrary to sound solid doctrine and the very clear words of Jesus Christ. We are saved by grace and that through faith and that not of yourselves, it is a gift from God. They, the Armstrong movement, have bound great burdens on us all which Jesus did not intend.
In layman’s terms these leaders are simply the Pharisees in another timeline burdening the people and preventing them from entering the kingdom. It’s funny, in the cog we were in for many years, they said that the words throughout the Bible were condemning leaders, they soon realised what they said and nothing was mentioned about it again. Through the entire book, God warns the leaders, they are false, thieves, murderers, liars and much more. The NT tells you exactly who will enter and who will not and that is ultimately God’s call. James even goes as far as saying “be not many masters…” the tongue of the leaders leads people to death when their message is false.
Such an overpowering and engrained ACOG paradigm would not just go away with the coming of the kingdom. These creatins, if they really were the gate keepers and rulers, would find a way of extrapolating it into the kingdom. They'll have you worrying about losing your being God as God is God status even there if you don't continue qualifying!
Can you imagine? "Brethren, did you think you had it made and could just slack off the minute you made it into the Kingdom??? Remember, Satan was once a very powerful and perfect arcangel, the light bringer! What happened? He was not vigilant enough and allowed sin and anger and rebellion to creep into his attitude! Don't let that happen to you!"
Can you clarify the source please?
Good professional journalism is only as good as their sources of information.
Journalist lifeblood is reliable, accurate and truthful information.
This same text was quoted on this web site on 31 March 2025 article "Qualify, Qualify, Qualify! Work, Work, Work! Or, Be Disqualified", and attributed to Samuel Kitchen.
Everyone qualifies, so crime is not an issue. Jesus will take anybody. Even Satan will make it in the end.
From the cited COG website text: “If we do not repent through the action of turning around and no longer walking our own way but now walking according to God's way, the Holy Spirit cannot dwell within us.”
First, let me say that the text that is cited does not come up to the usual level of writing found in the Armstrongist denominations. The author seems to have a weakness for exclamation points. The writing alone makes me think that we are not looking at something from the Armstrongist mainstream.
But the statement I cited above is standard cart-before-the-horse Armstrongist soteriology. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to convict people of their sinful state (John 16:8). And after such conviction, repentance is granted. Repentance is a gift (Acts 11:18). Here the COG author is making repentance a work of the person seeking salvation, as if that were even possible without the gifts of God.
The essential problem is that Armstrongism does not have a Doctrine of the Vicarious Humanity of Jesus. They see almost everything as do-it-yourself. So, they rant on the importance of this rugged individualism incessantly. It is coincidentally a means of control over people’s lives within the denomination. The Doctrine of the Vicarious Humanity of Jesus asserts that Jesus accomplished the cycle of salvation for us perfectly already. We even have within us the faith of Christ - not our own faith. It all comes to us as a gift. And we must in our daily lives echo, as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit, the walk of Jesus, though imperfectly.
Christians of this era are elect from the foundation of the Cosmos. It is impossible for someone to decide that they want to be a Christian and actively pursue the Armstrongist idea of self-generated repentance (erroneously defined as the discontinuance of sin). Romans 8:30 outlines the phases of soteriology: “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” In this cycle, there is no place for bootstrapping salvation. Christian conversion is not something that a person just decides to do and then works on diligently. Yet, Armstrongism works from that premise and this misunderstanding is blatant in this COG website text. And it is views like this that place Armstrongism outside the pale of Christianity.
Scout
Anon 7:06 AM PDT
‘Everyone qualifies, so crime is not an issue (except for those affected by it…my words). Jesus will take anyone. Even Satan will make it in the end’.
Everyone qualifies? Please explain. So we are saved by works? Even Satan will make it in the end??????? Please explain. Does it say clearly without any doubt or ambiguity in the holy texts that Satan will make it in the end.
"The purpose of God's Ministry is to build up and to edify the Church of God."
That has never been the case in HWA's church and its splinters. It's preserving the church and its ministers jobs that was the highest priority. To keep up numbers, they followed contemporary Christianity by being partial to the unrepentant and grooming the responsible to put up with all manner of abuse. Hence the frequent complaint of an accusation being a sentence while the unrepentant are protected. Herb's church didn't implode for no reason.
But the same question bounces back to you surely; aren't you blog masters and co tired of constantly having to despise and trash others?
Where's the peace? Where's the joy? I see none.
Always gotta have this person or that as the outcast. Complaining about this and that, tedious complaining... massive amounts of effort and thought expended to top up the "outcast status" of others? Outlandish accusations...Complaining to ones who are complete strangers to the latest "outcast"? Gotta have an outcast..
What effort. What energy.
I'd rather be the outcast than the ones who've had to listen to you lot complaining about others...so I ask again aren't you all tired of church wars?
Attributed is not clarification. Are readers to play a guessing game?
7:17am. On the contrary, repentance is very much a work of the person. Matthew 3:7-9 "But when he (John the Baptist) saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance." The Hebrew word for repentance means to turn away from sin. This is repeated many times in the bible. Ezekiel 33:11 "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
God granting repentance means that God accepts the repentance, and treats the person accordingly.
That's the point, Boo Boo! If you love Armstrongism, if that's the "others" to whom you refer, no peace and joy for you! We've resolved our own COGnitive dissonance, and take joy in exposing it so that others can resolve theirs, too.
As for this blog, if you don't like it, you don't have to look at it! Censorship is at its best when practiced on one's self! But, then again, this blog is positively captivating, and you must be helplessly drawn to it! Want to help us make our music? Come play with the band (The Banned)
April 29, 2025 at 11:50. No one is forcing you to read this blog. If you don't like its content, you are free to go elsewhere.
If this blog didn't serve a need, it wouldn't exist. It gives narratives outside of the echo chamber that are the ACOGs. The truth doesn't need a body guard, so the claim that sites like this are "pornography" is unfounded. Btw, the Jehovah's Witnesses also use the word pornography to describe material other than their own. The ACOGs and JWs are brother and sister.
Anonymous 5:18 wrote, “On the contrary, repentance is very much a work of the person.”
The question is not whether the person undergoes behavioral change. It is about how that change originates and is sustained. It is not something that a person does relying on his own capabilities. It is something that is God generated. Armstrongism recognizes this. From an article by Richard Sedliacik in the 1985 Good News Magazine: “…true repentance must come from God!” Repentance is not the work of a person but the work of Jesus in a person.
The Hebrew word for repentance means to sorrow. The Greek word is to change one’s mind. Armstrongism adds to these verbs the phrase “from sin.” This seems like a perfectly logical phrase to add because it answers the question “What is one repenting from?” But it concomitantly loads the words with another implication. It makes it sound like repentance is not just a change of heart but the achievement of the actual and absolute discontinuance from sin. So, unless you are living a perfectly sinless life, you have not repented.
The absolute discontinuance of sin is something that only Jesus could accomplish that is why we are saved by grace through faith and not of works. That is why we have the imputed righteousness of Jesus for our salvation. We don’t have the chops by ourselves.
You should thank God every day that your salvation is not contingent on your having a perfect performance in rejecting sin whether before or after bpatism. John the Baptist was just saying that he wanted to see some behavioral evidence of a changed heart. He wasn’t talking about some earthly perfection generated by the flesh prior to becoming a Christian. That idea is utterly unscriptural.
Scout
Only in your mind.
I have no intention of not reading everything this blog writes. Why? Because this blog is filled with rebels from within the UCG ministry. Wanna know what your ministers real opinion is ? Look no further than this blog.
Hypocrites who trash everything then go to church wearing masks and claim every wage, travel allowance and church perk going.
Where is the claim that this blog is pornography?
Scout, Richard Sedliacik is mistaken with his “…true repentance must come from God!” if one reads the bible from cover to cover, there is not one instance of God making a decision for another person. God can stir up, encourage etc, but there's a line that He cannot cross. To make a decision for another is murder. When Solomon fell away, God stirred up two of his enemies against him. That was the limit of what God could do. The ball was in Solomon's, not God's court.
Btw, Sedliacik was singing the song of church big government, ie, tyranny. "God," code word for Nazi ministers, have all rights and responsibilities, while members have none. Star Trek's Borg weren't pulled out of thin air.
April 29, 2025 at 11:50:36 PM PDT
before directing harsh words at the blog master bear in mind the apostle and his churches devoted decades being most critical of believers in other churches.
Fact is the fake apostle, and all of his daughter churches, are deserving of all criticism because of their blatant false hoods of having a special mission, and claims of being the one true church.
On the contrary, first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem and throughout the whole country of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I preached the need to repent and turn to God, and to do works giving evidence of repentance. Acts 26:20 NABRE
Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. Mat 3:8 NABRE
April 29, 2025 at 11:50:36 PM April 30, 2025 at 11:13:59 PM
The posts seem related. Just a little advice - 'gotta' and 'wanna' are not words used in normal English expression.
'gotta' (used above) and 'wanna' (used just below) are not words in English .
Um...a little check in Google will find that "gotta" and "wanna" are words in the Oxford Languages, Cambridge, Merriam Webster, Britannica, and Collins Dictionaries.
11.23, when I attended spokesman's club in the 1980s, on one occasion the minister called reading material critical of the church, pornography. Another member made the same claim in one of his speeches. I don't believe that such claims were limited to my congregation. The original Mystery of the Ages book frequently devalued other groups, so smearing your competition is very much a WWCG trait.
you are right they are used - I was trying to say they are not used in normal/formal expression, they are more the informal usage. I suppose in this blog informal usage is fine. But not in newspaper reporting or television news. Thanks for clarifying and best to you.
8:30 & 7:52 both together you unbelievably like to stalk people's goggle accounts, looking for dirt on them, jump to conclusions, and then set about trying to humiliate people and destroy reputations of people who you think you have dirt on.
You stalk people's music taste and mock and aim to humiliate them on that as well. How petty and pathetic.
That all says more about you two than any theological post you write on here.
The pharisee stood in the Temple and prayed 'Thank you God that I am not like these robbers, thieves, adulterers and even this tax collectors stood by me"
The tax collector wouldn't even put his head up and prayed " God have mercy on me a sinner" Gospel of Luke.
Anonymous 3:12
Repentance is a gift. It is up to the recipient of the gift to respond to it.
Richard Sedliacik, whom I do not know, did not work in isolation. What he wrote was published in an authorized WCG publication that had editors and what he wrote was likely reviewed by HWA himself. Ministers around the world read it and had the opportunity to contact Pasadena with any complaints. Pasadena had the chance to retract Sedliacik's work. The fact is your view is an outlier. You do not hold orthodox Armstrongist views. If your view is not just odd, you should be able to furnish us with a clear statement from an authorized WCG publication that asserts that repentance is not a gift.
Scout
Scout, if someone apologizes for sinning against me, and I accept that apology, that is my gift to them. Likewise repentance is a gift from God. God agrees to use Christ's sacrifice to forgive that sin/s. Of course Herb 'government is everything' Armstrong taught that repentance in the sense of turning away from sin comes from God rather than from the sinner. That's what government is everything means. The church culture was that members are rightless children. That's what Borg means. The same dynamics exist in dysfunctional toxic family systems.
Btw, two of my former ministers use to look at me with this unique strange look to the effect that I shouldn't be a free moral agent. I observed this same look in other psychopaths outside the church. Herb's members were expected to be mindless puppets. That is the inner face of Herb's church. It's because of this and similar abominations that the church fell apart on Herb's death.
Actually, I was ordained as a minister back in 2006 by the Universal Life Church. Seemed at the time as if it had some comedic value to it. But, then I got to thinking. We here take people to task for claiming titles for themselves. So, I've never used any of the privileges or cited it as authority. Also, never had anything to do with UCG.
Why do you believe that this blog has been infiltrated by UCG ministers? Others have stated they'd been ordained by ULC, though, but not UCG.
Just thinking. When are these ACOG retrograde radicals finally going to get with the times, and develop their female resources? Which group will be the first to introduce "Spokespersons' Club"?
The Armstrongist doctrine of qualification is another name for salvation by works. It is a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand. If someone asks the classical Armstrongist pulpit if they believe in salvation by works, they will pretend outrage and spew denials. This is because they know that salvation by works places them outside the pale of Christianity. But they DO believe in qualification. It is someone saying, "I don't believe in drinking alcohol but I do believe in drinking a medicinal nightcap."
The direct effect of the doctrine of qualification is that Armstrongists cannot believe they have salvation. Salvation is something that comes in the Last Judgement. It comes after a lifetime of struggling to conform to the Law of Moses. And Armstrongists will lose that battle. Most of them don't know that
Hoeh/Meredith/Armstrong have taught they must keep the entire Law of Moses excluding the sacrifices and the implementation of any death penalties. Most Armstrongists cannot tell you what the entire Law of Moses actually is.
So, Armstrongists live in a state of suspense wondering if they are going to perform well enough (their standard is perfection) to receive salvation. The grim secret is that they will all fail because the soteriology of Armstrongism sets up an unachievable set of conditions. But Paul says by grace through faith you are saved. Past tense.
Scout
Well, we must also remember the Amstrong gnosticism on this, Bill. HWA taught that as man continued to exist as a species, he continued to degenerate from the original perfect (before the fall) state. And, he would until the return of Christ.
My mother became very conscious of degeneration in all aspects of life, and changes in language, to her, were primary evidence of this. If we used certain words or even pronunciations around the house, her standard was an early edition of Websters Unabrdged Dictionary. Showing her that something was actually treated as a word in Funk & Wagnalls did not cut it with her. She literally banned us from watching "Leave it to Beaver" because we were picking up on the slang words which the Beave and Wally used!
So, this became another "thing" for myself and my siblings. We had two sets of vocabulary and pronunciations. One was the normal, which we used amongst our peers in the neighborhood and at school, and the other was reserved for usage at home and church. I mean there were already enough things to make us into pariahs without the vernacular which was commonly used being added to the dog pile!
Thankfully, for the last two years of high school, we moved to a predominantly Jewish community, also with a light smattering of African American presence, and I got along with everyone without the mockery experienced in the little red neck town where we lived from 4th grade up.
In retrospect, we former members, with HWA's guidance, made ourselves into ridiculous spectacles unnecessarily. Even if personal evangelism had been part or Armstrongism, during the so-called "golden age", we turned ourselves into unrelatable individuals who were easily marginalized, written off, and never taken seriously!
In order to avoid offending my poor deceased mother, wherever she is, I'll refrain from using slang to express my
outrage. The situation described above really created oral vacuum, and totally urinated me off!
So, if you're watching, Mom, there ya go! (Oops, slipped! Please don't blame the Beatniks!)
BB
Life must be very boring to you "Scout" as you know all thoughts, intentions and actions of all these despicable "Armstrongites".
How can you even bare to breath oxygen near these cretins that you so clearly despise. You're a martyr.
I'm so glad that your not a high ranking Pastor, as you have recently written that you have no power and are a nobody. I'm glad your not a Doctor Jekel and Mr Hyde character. Who'd want to be that in the long run?
Good for you that you are filled with and always behold others in love. Life must be wonderful.
You're the human form of Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness. Wrath, anger, clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
Crack on with spewing the love. Your a human rainbow, a blessing to all.
Amen.
UCG ministers have always been involved in this blog. They come here to spread their sedition in undermining the church. They are such big cowards; they have to do it anonymously, but they are here, nonetheless.
Wowie Zowwie! Some blame demons, and apparently some blame the ministers! I just don't see either here. Where's the damage?
Here? This blog is run, planned and poured over by UCG ministry. It's been a testing of the waters since 2011.
Any ucg members who stumbled across this blog and discerned the truth have been unmercifully bullied, at times, over the years.
All these debates here: Trinity ect only reveal what they want in UCG. Their patience is running low as time is against them.
Look. Some of us here attended AC in the '60s, and some of our classmates are now in influential positions in the different ACOGs. It hasn't happened frequently, but a couple of the guys approached family members who are still in splinterdom to see if I might be interested in hearing from them. In spite of the fact that those who asked had always struck me as being well-intentioned and sincere, my answer was that I preferred any communication or discussion to be right here on this blog. My way of equalizing what might have been unequal or lopsided footing. Though sincere, if they liked you, people have a tendency to get in their desperate little commercials for Herbert W. Armstrong. If anyone has made some sort of Hisloppian jump to the assumption I might be a UCG minister undercover, you could not be further from the truth. I left immediately following the great disappointment of 1975, and cut all ties. I've been extremely careful of who I allow back in. I've sensed that others are similarly guarded. In counting, I still have most of my fingers left!
BB
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