Have You Thrown Out Your Baking Soda Toothpaste Yet?

 Time is short, the end is near.  Only a few hours till all that leavening needs to be dumped in the garbage!!!!!

Have you cleaned your toaster, checked your suit pockets and pants cuffs for those stray pieces of sinful life that hides in you?

Have you moved the refrigerator from the wall, cleaned out your cupboards in the kitchen and scrubbed the refrigerator?

Have you vacuumed the car for those stray bread crumbs from your morning donut or sandwich on the run?

Have you cleaned your children's toy box for that cookie they lost the other day?

Have you looked at the labels on your vitamins and thrown out the brewers yeast tablets, just to be safe?

What about the baking soda pack in the fridge that is used exclusively to clean out odors?

What about your tube of baking soda toothpaste?

And there's the sodium bicarb that you use in the pool to regulate alkalinity, has it been dumped yet?

What about that box of frozen egg whites that you keep on hand to use in your baking to make your cakes light and flurry, or for that delicious fudge.  Have you dumped it yet?

Have you deleavened your home all by your self or brought in other church members to help you clean?  That is what many of your illustrious ministers and evangelists did and still do to this day.

HWA never cleaned any leavening out of his home or offices, neither did his two cook/housekeepers.  Instead they made employee's come in and clean HWA's home and offices for him.

Students used to have to scrub all the dining room chairs in the Student Center with toothbrushes to get the leavening out.  They also at one point in time had to hand scrub the teak wood floor in the Student Center for all those pesky pieces of bread and cake.  They had to use toothbrushes and toothpicks to get inteh cracks and crevices in the wood. Meredith, McNair, LaRavia and others made custodians come in and clean their homes for them.  Silly sheeple!  Here you could have had others cleaning your houses all along!

The same magical belief system still controls members to this day.  They think they are required to do it, that their salvation is dependent on it and that their works have redeemed them.

Its COG Passover Time!

It is time for Armstrongism's yearly ritual of it's continual crucifixion of someone they call Jesus.  Armstrongism has left its Jesus broken and beaten in college/high school gyms and Masonic Lodges around the country for the last 70 some years.  For most in Armstrongism this is about the only service in the Church of God that really has anything to do with its Jesus. Other than closing a church service with "In Jesus Name..." it is all about Moses, David, Elijah, Jeremiah and the Prophets of Old and every minuscule thing you can attach to the law.

For decades it was also one of the most secretive services of the church.  Only  baptized members who were approved by the ministry were allowed to participate.  Guards were placed at the doors to keep out any public and for those who had been disfellowshipped.

This is also a night that Armstrongism picks and chooses on how it will observe it.  There are some in the COG that call this a 'bastardization of the true Jewish Passover.'  The COG keeps the parts it wants while rejecting other parts of it. The COG tries to get as close as it can to Jewish law and traditions without ever really doing anything that pertains to Jewish law or tradition.  Like it's interpretation of Scripture the COG picks and chooses what it wants for this night.

Sadly though, this is not a night that brings most members into any kind of relationship with Jesus.  It is the ultimate in power control of the Church over the membership.

For weeks ahead of time the minister stands up preaching that the church members are unworthy worms who will NEVER be able to do what God says.  The members are portrayed as disgusting vile sinners just teetering on the edge of annihilation. Sermons and sermonettes, week after week, will dwell on the unworthiness of members while the enlightened one is up in front of them preaching.  Members are told to examine, reexamine and  otherwise prove themselves worthy to even share the same room as the enlightened humble minister as he prepares to be Jesus' instrument of torture..

This is also the one night of the year that all true members know they cannot miss.  God forbid if they have done something and the minister has told them to not come.  If they miss this night then their sins for the past year will not be forgiven.  Two full years of being an unredeemed filthy sinner will weigh heavily on the members mind.  Because of this, members will do anything the minister tells them.  They will do it through the year when the minister, evangelist, or Apostle tells them to do something that they may not even like.  If they refuse they know their eternal salvation is at risk.  In other words, keep the brethren fearful, ashamed, browbeaten with unworthiness, never being able to measure up and they will be compliant unquestioning sheeple.

Working in Pasadena for the many years I was there I got to see much of  this kind of attitude first hand.  Ministers threatening Church members or employees with being barred from Passover services scared the hell out of people.  People came to this service many times totally distraught and nauseated.  They would get physically sick having to listen to the the minister making sure that you heard the sound of the breaking of the matzo's.  In Pasadena they used to turn the sound up higher as the minister broke the matzo's so that you got to hear the crunching and breaking sound to remind you that you are a filthy piece of human garbage that continues to crucify Jesus - oops, sorry, CHRIST- day in and day out. Some would also get sick when the wine trays were passed with the dry red wine that had such a strong stomach turning odor..

And how would a COG Passover be complete without foot washing?  We had ministers and department heads in Pasadena who would hand pick the  people who would wash their feet.  God forbid if any of them had to touch a lowly ordinary member!  Those people got pulled into special areas where the  ministry washed feet away from the wandering eyes of the clods that were Church members.  In heated  rooms with hot water and fresh fluffy towels you were treated to the Holy feet of God's true ministers. You knew you had reached good standing with God if you got to wash a ministers feet.

It got so that I never participated in the Passover services in the last few years that I attended WCG.  I would help people set things up and prepare for it but it no longer had any meaning to me.  Watching the hypocrites in the ministry day in and day out ruining peoples lives made it a disgusting display of arrogance to sit there as they pretended to be humble servants of God.