True Christian Love in the Church of God

A story from Facebook on how a COG minister treated the members in his area.

We had a young family that occasionally arrived a little late...three boys and a newborn baby, who can blame them? Well... The Pastor and elders set up the chairs and podium to face the entrance door to teach them a lesson. That week when the family walked in late they entered next to the speaker who stopped and stared at them, the entire congregation facing them gasping in disgust. HWA would have been proud.

Dennis On: Oh Me Of Little Faith: Of Man and Mustard Seeds

Of Man and Mustard Seeds

 

Let's imagine that Jesus truly is God. What might he have done to prove it? He could have started by taking one of his most famous quotes from the Bible and acting on it. In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says quite clearly: 

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

I would think it only fair that if someone is going to tell others just how easy this would be IF one had the SMALLEST of faith, Jesus , who tells us this himself, should at least be able to demonstrate how it is done.  I mean, let me see YOU do it....Wow!!!!  It is possible !!!!  I believe you now!  Oh me of little faith...Well actually, even if I had a little faith, I could at least do that!  "

So Jesus takes up the challenge simply to show his disciples and all who read his words in the future and struggle over their puny faith, that indeed, this is possible.   Jesus selects Mt Tabor where he had previously met with Moses, Elijah Peter and a couple others to show the transfiguration.  With just a bit of faith, Jesus will demonstrate mountain moving.  He will say..."Mt Tabor, in my smallest of genuine faith I command you to leave this location and relocate to the empty spot left by the Santorini Volcanic blast, in Greece, many years ago.  You will be a nice addition to the landscape and the locals will appreciate getting their mountain back." 

 Poof!!!!!  Gone!!!.  In the place of Mt. Tabor is a large flat space that will now make a lovely site for a scenic housing project overlooking the Jezreel Valley.  If the Greeks measure the base of the new mountain now sitting in the crater left by the Volcano, it will exactly match the base of Mt. Tabor and scientific analysis will confirm the make up of the Mt as being of Middle Eastern origin. 

And Jesus will have proven that at least he has even the smallest of living faith that can indeed transform mountains from one place to another.  Now, if he doesn't do it, or if he can't do it, or if he refuses to show he can do it, but doesn't want to do it because it would come across as "some cheap trick,"   then please don't ask me to do it or feel bad that my faith in life is not even the size of a grain of mustard seed.  That makes me feel inadequate and bad about myself!  As a teacher, I try my best NOT to ask or expect my students to do things or know how to do things that I don't know or know how to do myself.  That just seems wrong.  Not that I could always do the things I thought we all should do but at least when I realized I couldn't, I admitted it. Ok...I eventually admitted it! 

I think we know that Jesus never moved any mountains in his year long, or three year long, depending on which Gospel you read, ministry.   So I would consider this a bad teaching.  No one, not even the one who taught it was possible, has ever actually done it.  It is a meaningless teaching and causes only personal pain and feelings of hopeless loss and inadequate faith.  I wonder if anyone ever quietly, when alone in the mountains, commanded one to move somewhere and it didn't of course, and then just walked away with a big sigh of , "oh well?"   I bet they have...

Therefore, if you have issues with your faith.  If you feel badly that you have never been able to do this or when your child died, or your partner was killed or had cancer, or when you were low on funds and all the tithing in the world did not open the windows of heaven for you...relax.  You did not lack faith.  Your faith was not smaller than even a mustard seed so that's why you did not get your answer.  If your mountain never moved, well we have to say, it is ok.  It did not move for Jesus either.   

Dennis C. Diehl

DenniscDiehl@aol.com

Why HWA Needed His Ego Stroked

I don't remember where I got this.  I have had it for a while in a file.  It explains a lot on how Herbert worked and why he did what he did.

Herbert was raised a Quaker by a very strict and dominating father, which had a profound effect on his life.  Eager to get away from a bullying and brutal father he left school after the eighth grade and tried to make his own way in the world.

Having been told that he would amount to nothing and often beaten and verbally abused he developed a deep personal sense of inferiority which manifested itself in an imperative need to be a success and prove his father wrong.

This inferiority complex had a much greater down side, making him suseptible to flatterer’s.  Herbert loved to be flattered, especially by men he looked up to, or regarded as successful.  This proved to be his undoing in his later life as Satan always attacks us on our most vulnerable weaknesses.

At the same time his father’s bullying attitude was reproduced in Herbert; first because that was his primary influence, and second because he was determined to always take a dominant position and to never be bullied himself again.

This dominant personality trait seems to have run in the family because his cousin and wife Loma was no slouch herself.  She was known for keeping her husband in line, sometimes even shouting from the pews during services “Don’t you dare talk to God’s people like that”.  Their marriage was presented as perfect as they could to the brethren; when much of the time it was a perfect storm.  Loma worked hard at  protecting him from his tendency to succumb to flatteries and from his more extreme domination tendencies; which efforts were often resented by her husband.