Yes, you read that right. Divine eagles. Or, as some of the more practically minded ministers used to quietly whisper, commercial airplanes…but those planes would have metal fatigue, and the Germans would put us on these planes with the hope they would crash before we made it to Petra. Because nothing builds faith like hoping your rescue flight does not plummet into the ocean or desert.
The best part? Apparently, no one in the Church of God ever bothered to run this plan by the Jordanians.
Picture it: thousands of slightly unhinged American cultists led by Bob Thiel, Gerald Flurry, and Dave Pack, suddenly materializing in the middle of Jordan, confidently announcing, “Excuse us, we’re God’s special remnant. We’ll be taking over Petra now — you know, your ancient city and massively profitable tourist attraction. Thanks so much! Don’t mind us while we wait out the Tribulation in your backyard. Oh, and you are supposed to feed us, take care of our sanitation needs, and provide us with beds, blankets, clothing, shoes, and anything else we are used to as God's chosen people.”
One can only imagine the Jordanian tourism minister’s face when informed that a bunch of prophecy-obsessed Midwesterners planned to commandeer one of the country’s biggest money-makers for three and a half years, all while claiming divine right of occupancy.
But hey, why spoil a good doctrine with minor details like international law, foreign sovereignty, or basic common sense?
In the end, that’s the quiet truth behind the Petra fantasy. The Church of God never really thought about anyone other than itself. The rest of the world — including the actual owners of Petra — were just background props in their very own private end-times movie. Jordanians? Germans? Crashing planes? Details, details. As long as the “true church” gets its exclusive VIP bunker in the rocks, everything else is someone else’s problem.
Truly, nothing says “God’s loving protection” quite like assuming the entire planet will happily rearrange itself so a tiny American splinter group can play biblical cosplay in a Jordanian national treasure.
5 comments:
Imagine how different things would have been if Loma Armstrong had instead become enamored with a National Geographic article about Nauvoo, or Central Africa, or Detroit!
The criticism that "commercial planes" would face metal fatigue assumes the Church is rescuing itself. The doctrine teaches that the faithful are given "two wings of a great eagle" (Revelation 12:14). This is understood as a supernatural, angelic, or miraculous rescue directly from God, not a last-minute scramble to an airport. The "eagle" is frequently used in scripture to depict God's powerful protection of His people, as in Exodus 19:4, "I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself."
You're out of date. The "two wings of a Great Eagle" are the Deli wing and the Produce wing.
I also have heard ministers say this same thing. It was real popular when they were finding cracks in DC10 wings. This was spread in 1980 after a DC10 had crash in 79 and subsequent investigations found multiple planes with cracked wings. The ministers said that because so many planes had been grounded due to the cracks, the government would bring them back into use in order to fly us to Petra to get us out of the country. Another idiot minister used to preach that the reason the space shuttle was designed was to send COG members into space in order to kill them.
She should have picked Independence Missouri as this is the place the Mormons say Eden was located and where Christ will return to the earth when he returns again.
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