Dennis Muses: "Giving up the Ghosts..."

Just What Do You Mean

"God Haunted"?

 

Brutus and the Ghost of Caesar

 

haunt (hônt, hnt)

v. haunt·ed, haunt·ing, haunts

v.tr.

1. To inhabit, visit, or appear to in the form of a ghost or other supernatural being.

2. To visit often; frequent: haunted the movie theaters.

3. To come to the mind of continually; obsess: a riddle that haunted me all morning.

4. To be continually present in; pervade: the melancholy that haunts the composer's music.

v.intr.

To recur or visit often, especially as a ghost.

n.

1. A place much frequented.

2. also hant or ha'nt (hnt) or haint (hnt) Chiefly Southern U.S. A ghost or other supernatural being.

 

 

God haunted is what James Malm, Samuel Kitchen and E.W.King are.  David C. Pack and Gerald Flurry are God Haunted.  All of those who listen to them are God Haunted.

 

Being God haunted, using the above definitions, to often visit the scriptures...any scripture found anywhere on any topic to try and discern what it must mean for you today and to pick a way in which it can control, alter or influence your thinking.  Mistaken and mispoken ministers do this to the congregation knowlingly or, more likely, unknowingly.

 

Being God Haunted is to continually obsess on everything from "God's plan" to "Jesus Christ NOW is _____"  fill in the blank.  It makes you wear or not wear certain clothes or kinds of clothes.  It dictates the foods you eat or don't eat .  It may dictate how you cook that food or even if you do.   Being God Haunted determines  the days you keep or don't keep as sacred or meaningful.  Being God Haunted makes one keep those days in exact and certain ways and times.  It calculates and measures.

 

 

Being God Haunted determines just how you view marriage and "roles."   If it is God/Christ/My Church Leader/Me and then my wife to be followed by the kids and their pets, the woman is going to find out real fast what God Haunted religion is going to do to her individuality.  God Haunted parents ruin kids and teach them that conformity in spite of individuality and the authenticity of each person is all that is required.  God Haunted parents forget they got to make life choices themselves unless they too are the product of God Haunted parents who only demanded conformity to the family ways, now pass it on.  God Haunted parents send their kids to God Haunted Summer Camps or programs where the kids then learn the fine art of either wearing the mask of conformity or the fine art of getting around the rules and having some fun.

 

Gerald Flurry is God Haunted.  His obsession with HWA and the Book of Malachi where in he sees himself as "That Prophet" is classic God Hauntedness.  It's also classic delusional thinking. He's not "that prophet" and he's not even that intelligent.  Gerald is Haunted by the Ghost of HWA who I am not confident was God Haunted in the same ways.  HWA had his ghosts but I don't perceive they were obsessions with how exactly to be and do things to be on God's good side.  Being God Haunted is the fear of doing something Biblically inappropriate or forbidden upon pain of death or being cut off from the Deity.  Purification rites are being God Haunted.  Washings and sacrifices are being God Haunted.  Giving money you really do not have to give is being God Haunted.  Allowing your pastor to badger you into giving up retirements, homes, possessions, stuff, time and effort , with the appropriate scriptures to back it up, against your better stomach twitching judgment, is being God Haunted.

 

Dr. Robert Thiel is God Haunted.  He worries about how God views football, make up and the role of women.  I suppose he has mused on NASCAR too.  I don't know.  But if the question came up, he'd have to search the scriptures for a principle with which to make a judgment on the matter.  That's God Haunted. 

 

Being God haunted agonizes over questions about what constitutes leavening or at what age my child should fast on Atonement.  It never crosses their mind to ask the child or even teen if they wish to participate of their own free will.  They are afraid they might say not this year and then the Deity will be really miffed.  Being God Haunted asks whether God approves of oral sex or not.  As one minister begged when the presenter at a Refresher Program thought this needed to be addressed "in the Church",  "Stop, stop...don't answer that!  You'll lose the entire French Church!"   End of discussion.

 

Being God Haunted begs for an answer to whether you can eat out on a certain day of the week or turn on your lights or stove.  Being God Haunted keeps you near breathless to hear the next "announcement" as to what God is doing this week which obviously  He forgot to include in last week's announcement.  Being God Haunted looks back at what actually happened as opposed to what one said must happen and rewrites the script to keep it ever about to happen.

 

And of course, David C Pack, head of the Restored Church of God, is God Haunted.  Seeing himself as spoken of by the prophet Haggai and Zechariah is classic God Haunted. It is classic mental illness as well I am sure by someone's knowledgeable definition.  I can't judge Dave's religious sincerity.  But he is God Haunted and obsessive about meaning and what God, Christ and the Devil are doing these days concerning his Restored Church of God and himself. . They all are and they search and search the scriptures to find meaning and to define everything they can think up to think on.   He is obsessive about all things HWA.  Being God Haunted never means "I was wrong,"  "I misspoke" or "I got a little carried away with scripture and I apologize."   It always means, "The Prophecy still stands!  We  (not I) were wrong in the "Timing."  And the God Haunted pursuit of the content of God's mind continues unabated and unexamined.

One of the worst explanations of scripture ever given in WCG as to how one should study the bible is found in  Isaiah 28 9-11

…9 "To whom would He teach knowledge, And to whom would He interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just taken from the breast? 10 "For He says, 'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.'" 11. Indeed, He will speak to this people Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue,…"



This scripture is God, MOCKING the drunken priests of Ephraim and their way of teaching.  It is God, through Isaiah, telling them they talk like babies.  Later God says if that's the way you want it, that's the way God will respond and we'll see how that works out for you.

New International Version
"For it is: Do this, do that, a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there."

New Living Translation
"He tells us everything over and over--one line at a time, one line at a time, a little here, and a little there!"

These are not compliments and certainly NOT how one should study scripture to get "Gods intended meaning" or to promote "Letting the Bible interpret the Bible." 
 

When I was pastoring in Kentucky, people would tell me that various areas or places "had the Haints."  That meant it was haunted.  It had ghosts and was full of strange and weird things and happenings. 

 

Is there a cure for "the Haints"?  Only time and with experience I suppose.  Some clear thinking people, and I'm not seeing a lot of that in some of the COG membership as they sit week after week being entertained by the fairy tales of a Dave Pack or the lesseer players like Thiel, Malm, Kitchen and King,,  will reach the point of clarity and finally give up the ghosts.

Many won't and really probably can't. 

 

On this topic in the behaviors, requirements and machinations of the key players in the Church of God unending God Haunted drama, it will take time and a deep level of finally coming to see what "by their fruits you shall know them" actually means to the observer of these things.   This is the only real Ghost Buster I know and you'll know it when it shows up.

 

It usually presents itself when you hear the voice in your head, almost mid sentence or mid sermon say...

 

"This is stupid...I ain't afraid of no ghosts"

 

 

Samuel Kitchen: You Armstrong Haters Are At A Crossroads. Your Salvation Is At Stake. Repentance Came Through HWA

Look at the faces of these people, you can almost see the drool.

Did you know that repentance came to us though Herbert Armstrong? 

In a few short months you may be standing in front of the world court in Jerusalem having to give testimony on why you mock Herbie.

The reason I defend Herbert W Armstrong and what Christ taught through him is to give you the opportunity to repent. You are at a crossroads It is not my salvation that is at stake. It is yours. It is now on your head, the decision. Shortly ahead you will stand before the world court in Jerusalem, and you will have to give testimony to the court. This decision will once again reappear. The Ball is in your court. I am not here to convince, but to defend the Truth, and keep the body of Christ from being slandered, and to focus people in the right direction. You have a right to not believe me, or even to consider what I say. That is your right. We are free moral agents. You believe what you want to believe, and I will believe what I believe and in the end we will know the truth of the matter. But I ask why wait until the end, when we can know the truth now? And if we know the truth , and we reject it, in the end we will not be with Christ.

Samuel Kitchen: You Would Be A Bible Illiterate If It Were Not For HWA

Samuel Kitchen is just like David C. Pack.  Kitchen is a Bible reader and not a theologian.  Armstrongism does not have theologians who actually study the Bible and use critical thinking.

HWA's theology came from a public library where he spent his time for six months instead of looking for a job to support his family.  He mooched off of others as he studied out dated books in a public library.  Public library's are not great bastions of academia.  You need a college library, a seminary library that has more in depth books and study material.

Kitchen wrote this about the great theological knowledge that Herb passed on:

YOU WOULD BE A COMPLETE BIBLE ILLITERATE IF IT WASN'T FOR GOD USING AND CALLING HERBERT W ARMSTRONG! You would have no Ambassador Auditorium, No Ambassador College, NONE!

Apparently God was not too enthralled with Ambassador Auditorium or Ambassador College.  The church lost them both.  Now the college is being torn down.  All gone. NONE!