Hey Dale Schurter! Where For Art Thou? Is Your Email Being Monitored?

Thanks to MishMash for pointing this out to me today.

Our beloved Dale Schurter has been absent from the scene after he posted his initial letter on the Restored Church of God site for defecting UCG ministers.

He had his own email address, mailing address and phone number listed.  He encouraged people to call him or write with questions.

No longer are you worthless Laodician peons allowed to do that.  Dale's email is now being filtered through the Restored Church of God servers and monitored by them. Brother Dale's new address is:  dschurter@rcg.org



MM writes:

His previous one was a Juno address.  Also his phone number is gone.   Hmmm.   I have a feeling that he taking a lot of heat and they are now cutting off access to him.   For sure they are now monitoring everything that comes into him.  I still have his regular email address its daleschurter@juno.com  I wonder if he has pulled the plug on it or not.    If he is smart, he would keep a private laptop on a separate isp and keep his own email.  But who said anything about smart.   Or, the other scenario is that he is kicking himself right now for such a dumb decision.   Latest article on the ministers site says that Dale is upset because people are thinking that he is saying that they lost the holy spirit.   Mr. Bill wrote that one for him.  Why didn’t he write it himself?   Suspicious is all I can say ! 

RCG's Gestapo made one tiny mistake though, his old email address is still visible on his initial letter:

Dale L. Schurter
daleschurter@juno.com
(631) 561-8784

Van Robison on: "RETHINKING THE BIBLE"

RETHINKING THE BIBLE

Like millions of others, I too believed the Bible was infallible and inerrant for many years of my life.  I have read the Bible from cover to cover, more than once and studied portions of it many times.  Based upon certain verses in the Bible, we have all been led to believe that it is all inspired by God.  Perhaps part of the reason for that belief is that even Jesus Christ made reference to certain individuals in the Old Testament.  In life I have learned to question and that to automatically assume something is true, is a sure ticket to deception.  Bible infallibility is actually a form of CENSORSHIP, which means to Bible apologists that it cannot be questioned, because to question the Bible is to question God.  Not so!

Strangely, even in the New Testament the reader is told to "prove all things" and "try the spirits whether they be of God."  The things Jesus Christ taught during His human life time, were jaw-dropping.  Jesus Christ was is in fact the most renowned whistleblower the world has ever known and His impact upon human beings is monumental.  We read that Jesus came to SET THE CAPTIVES FREE.  Jesus also DEMOLISHED man-made religion as recorded in Matthew 23, which is worthy of being read and thought about by all church goers.  Jesus was profound.  Jesus offended the religious rulers and the religious elite.  I would even suggest that should Jesus Christ walk our streets today, He would bypass the "pastors", the "senior pastors", the "bishops", the "elders", the "reverends", the mega-church leaders, those with titles such as "Dr. Pastor", the "scholars", those with "masters" degrees in theology, those with "doctorate" degrees in theology and so forth and once again hand-pick "uneducated fishermen", or perhaps farmers or housewives as disciples (people with common sense).

Jesus Christ bucked the religious status-quo.  Jesus and His disciples picked corn and ate it on the Sabbath Day.  Jesus healed the sick on the Sabbath day.  Jesus proved that man-made religion is just that---man-made.  Jesus did not wash His hands before He ate, which was an offense to the legalists.  In our world today, we also have the legalists, not only in the original Worldwide Church of God and its many daughters, but the world is overrun with religious legalists in many different groups.  Going to church itself is a form of legalism.  What does it really have to do with salvation or eternal life?  Sure Jesus entered the synagogue, but not to learn truth, but to enlighten those who lived in darkness.

The church world is Bible obsessed.  They think life on earth revolves around Bible study.  It does NOT!  Life really revolves around LOVE (at least it should), and God is LOVE.  How is God love in the face of tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and "natural" disasters?  What about endless wars of death and destruction?  The issue is that God created human life and we all suffer because of the decisions humans make in life.  Most of us are not responsible for the heinous wars of mankind, but many suffer because of them.  Why does God not intervene and stop them?  I have asked that question a million times and the only conclusion I have is that we have to learn from living, but that does not make God responsible for insane wars.  As to natural disasters, I have no answer, but I do not assign evil to God.  Who does not have questions with no valid answers?

The Bible in my opinion is a great deal of fiction, myth, legend and human fabrication.  That of course offends the senses of many.  I can receive the fact that there are some good teachings in the Bible, especially the words attributed to Jesus Christ, such as about love, compassion, mercy, empathy and humility but that does not cause me to believe that everything in the Bible is fact or truth.  I have no idea how the New Testament was penned, even though I have read that it was penned many years AFTER the life of Jesus Christ.  Was Jesus Christ quoted "verbatim?"  How does anyone know?  Truth is---they don't know!  For many it seems that their faith in Jesus depends entirely upon the false belief that "the Bible is infallible and inerrant."

The Old Testament and the book of "Revelation" both defy the teachings of Jesus Christ and are cause to seriously doubt inspiration.  Just because one verse says "all scripture is given by inspiration of God", does not make what is called the Bible, the word of God.  In the end of the book of "Revelation" we read that anyone who tampers with "Revelation" will suffer the consequence.  That is an obvious attempt at CENSORSHIP and I would suggest that the real author of this novel and fiction had an ulterior motive.  Throughout history men have always put words in the mouth of God that God never spoke and attributed events to God that God is not responsible for.  The gullible and naive "think" God authored the Bible, for no other reason that they read "all scripture is given by inspiration of God", and the hard fact is that ANYONE with pen in hand could pen such words and attach anything to those words they wish, causing the reader to believe that God did it, when He did not.

Anyone who digs deep will learn that there are mountains of information about the Bible, that will overturn what millions have believed about it.  There is an avalanche of knowledge about the Bible that will no doubt change the course of how human beings see the Bible in the years to come.    In my personal convictions, that does not cause me to be an atheist or cause me to doubt Jesus Christ.  In fact, without Jesus Christ there is NO LIGHT in the world.  Naturally I read that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, but also the Living Waters, the Bread of Life, the Manna from Heaven, the Light of the World, the Vine, the Door, the Resurrection, the Good Shepherd and the ONLY Master from the Bible and I accept that.  What other hope is there?  NONE!

Is what is called "the Bible" really a man-made idol?  Do many worship "the Bible?"  Of course they say they do not, but I believe they do.  The Bible is really just INK on PAPER.  It is not God and God is not the Bible.  God is a Spirit Being, He is not INK on PAPER.


Van Robison

Prophet Thiel: The Catholic Church Came to the COG To Get The Canon

God's favorite prophetic mouthpiece has a bold comment today on his blog.  Prophet Thiel claims that the Catholic Church actually came to the Church of God (the Saturday keeping, kosher eating, holy day keeping, circumcised kind) to find out what books they were using for their Bible when Jerome was setting the canon.

 For years I have studied into this subject extensively and strongly believe that the Bible and secular history support the view that the Catholics and the Protestants got their books of the Bible from the Church of God.  Specifically, for one example, when the Catholic saint Jerome was putting his Latin Vulgate version together, he went to Palestine/Judea and met with non-Catholics who seemed to be part of the COG to confirm what was valid. 

Prophet Thiel is reacting to Dixon Cartwright's articles about the  Biblical canon in The Journal.  Dave Havir has this quote in The  Journal:

In his editorial, “Lo and Behold, an Elephant Is in Our Room,” Mr. Cartwright broached a subject that he says most conservative Christians almost never talk about even though it has profound implications for Christians’ view of the Bible and therefore their view of God and everything else.

“Yet where did our approved list of Bible books come from,” Mr. Cartwright asked, “and how do we know
that God inspired and even breathed them as holy writ?”

The elephant in the room is “right there beside us and we don’t notice that the books we virtually venerate
reside in our system of beliefs thanks to the imposed authority of a religious organization that Protestants and the Churches of God general reject.”

The organization Mr. Cartwright mentioned is the Catholic Church, although he says he isn’t being critical
of Catholics.

“I mentioned them because I think it’s ironic that Catholics, and their predecessors, decided on which books
should be considered Scripture even though they don’t believe in sola scriptura, the principle of relying solely on the Bible for doctrines.”

I never cease to be amazed at how Prophet Thiel thinks he is an authority on EVERYTHING!  He knows for SURE that they Catholics came to get the canon of the Church of God when they were establishing their version of the Bible.

Most Armstrongites have NEVER researched into the Bible, how it was written, by whom, etc.  They only know what Herbert Armstrong said, or  Rod Meredith, or Dave Pack or Gerald Flurry says about it.  If these men said it, so let it be done! "God is working through them so there is no need to ever read any books about Biblical authenticity."

One thing I did forget that the church taught, that was brought out be a reader in The Journal, was that  the writings of Herbert Armstrong would eventually make it in the canon of the Bible.

• The WCG believed that Herbert W. Armstrong’s writings would become part of NT scripture when Christ returned. So the WCG did not believe in a closed canon.

When will Rod Meredith and the Living Church of God ever reign in their embarrassing mouthpiece.  Do most LCGers think Bob is the greatest gift on earth to them?