Are You Prepared For HWA Yelling At You Again?

For those of you who never quite got enough of Herb yelling at you from the pulpit 

or shouting at you in the member letters, 

rest assured that HWA is coming back to rip you up one side and down the other! 

Instead of dealing with Jesus at the resurrection 

you will have a showdown with Herb 

and boy is he pissed!

But Mr. Armstrong was clear, too. He preached the whole gospel. Indeed, I wouldn’t understand any of the gospel at all save for what God taught me, and many of us, through the words of Mr. Herbert W Armstrong.
Did Mr. Armstrong recognize that the gospel taught by mainstream Christianity was disastrously off? Of course! If anyone reads anything Mr. Armstrong wrote and doesn’t pick that up, they haven’t read much at all! He recognized that the “gospel” being touted by most was simply a story about Christ—not the actual Divine Message that He preached at all! Most cut the very heart of the gospel right out: the coming Kingdom of God! And the part they tried to teach about salvation, he recognized was a counterfeit that didn’t explain salvation, at all!

Plenty of quotes could be provided from Mr. Armstrong demonstrating that he understood this—and many provide such quotes. That Mr. Armstrong recognized that the shallow “gospel” about Christ had replaced the actual gospel OF Christ is a given, as easily demonstrated by ample amounts of “quotable quotes.” Who disputes that? I don’t. No one I know in the Church does.

But what about the quotes that those who attack the gospel don’t give? What about the quotes that illustrate Mr. Armstrong understood the gospel more fully than those who attack his message (while claiming to believe in it) give him credit for? Why don’t they provide those quotes, as well? And in the rare case when they do provide one of them, why do they insert their own commentary into the middle of Mr. Armstrong’s words, making him out to be the world’s worst writer instead of the powerfully effective “plain truth” preacher that he really was?

Again, for the sake of emphasis: The Bible record is clear about the gospel brought by Jesus Christ, and I am humbled to be allowed to be a part of a Work that continues—just as Herbert Armstrong did—to preach that gospel. If anyone would like to prove to me that what we preach is not that gospel, they are free to open their Bibles and try. I’d rather be shown to be wrong and be right with God, than to be declared right but be wrong with God. Really: Show me. Put your Bible where your mouth is.

 However, this post isn’t about that. It’s about the fact that many continue to, in effect, slander Herbert W Armstrong by saying that he preached an incomplete gospel—all while claiming to “stand for Herbert W Armstrong.” Some seem to do so with good intention, being honestly deceived by those skilled at quoting a lot without (wink, wink) quoting too much (nudge, nudge). Those who are self-deceived by their Jeremiah 17:9 hearts are another matter. It’s one matter to believe a lie out of confusion, but another entirely to continue in a lie because it serves one’s ego. As for which category one falls into, thankfully it is not my task to judge, but His. I’d rather assume the best until I have good reason to believe otherwise.

From Herbert W. Armstrong and the “Whole, Pure Gospel”

LCG On Pine Trees With Dripping Blood Splatters

delightful dripping blood splatters

On one of many of the seasonal fluff that the LCG and other COG's dump out for Christmas each year there is a choice little piece by Gary Ehman on the evils of pine trees.  His article is just another fine mess which is a result of proof-texting.

Ehman wants to make sure all of you reprobates that put up a pine tree for Christmas that you know exactly where that tree represents.  Low and behold it has nothing to do with Nimrod or his testicles.

It all has to do with this isolated quote from the Bible:

Notice His commands: “These are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things” (Deuteronomy 12:2–4).

Ehman get;'s his new information from " The Golden Bough"

The man-god Attis, after an unsuccessful courtship of the goddess Cybele, mutilated himself, “under a pine-tree, and bled to death on the spot. ... After his death Attis is said to have been changed into a pine-tree … [in worship practices] a pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a great divinity … Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt into a frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood.” (The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer, “The Myth and Ritual of Attis” Chapter 34).
Attis’ bloody act under an evergreen tree, along with—as the historical record points out—subsequent duplications by Attis worshippers, has provided paganism with its seasonal red and green motifs.

How could I have missed the blood red ornaments on my tree as blood splatters upon the altar?  Or as the idiot from Australia pointed out the the other day the tinsel was representative of ejaculations.  Crazy people just fascinate me!

It is obvious that “green trees” and what takes place “religiously” under them, is of great concern to God. Any association between the Christmas tree, with its wretchedly rich pagan roots (pun intended), and Jesus Christ, is not found in the Bible. In fact, every aspect of Christmas with its traditions of mistletoe, holly, wreaths, pine boughs (all green with blood-red accents), gift exchanging, wassailing, December 25 (time of the winter solstice) is not found anywhere in God’s Word, except, maybe, the reference to serving their gods“under every green tree.” Green Trees and Jesus

Ehman equates the "green trees' in Deuteronomy with Christmas trees.  That is about as stupid as saying that Jeremiah describes Christmas trees when it talks about people cutting down trees and covering them with gold.

Pork Memoirs

As far as the world was concerned, we adherents of the Worldwide Church of God were neither Christians nor Jews. Branded heretics by some and idolaters by others, we kept approximately the same liturgical and dietary traditions as the Karaite Jews, including the avoidance of pork. Though unlike the Karaites, we embraced Christ as the Messiah. I was born and raised in this group, with no exposure to any other religion for the first twenty years of my life.

Then “the changes” came. Our leader decided he wanted to become an Evangelical Christian. Instead of going alone and leaving the faithful in peace, he decided to try to force the rest of his church to bend to his will. My family was one of the casualties of this force-feeding; however, my parents, who were once secular Christians, had no issues in transitioning into what we would have once considered a purely secular lifestyle—one that I had never could have imagined.

Check out the rest of this story here on Pork Memoirs