Philadelphia Church of God on Depression

Leave it to one of the most abusive Churches of God to lecture the COG and society on depression.  The track record of the Philadelphia Church of God and how it has ruined lives and marriages over its existence is appaling. So for the PCG, and particularly Dennis Leap, to lecture us on the causes of depression is revolting.

Dennis Leap wants everyone to know that because they have broken the 10 commandments THAT is the reason people are depressed. And, lest we are too dumb to forget, Satan and his demons are also the cause.

Unseen Spiritual Forces

The majority of people are completely blind to the fact that even the unconscious violation of God’s spiritual laws—the Ten Commandments, God’s means to guarantee human happiness—sets one up to experience mental, emotional and personal problems and negative attitudes. The Ten Commandments are in force just like the law of gravity. When we obey them, the result is peace of mind, inner joy and happiness. Yet if we break them, we become broken. We must face the reality that consciously doing things we know are wrong results in negative or depressed feelings. 

If this is true, then why are some of the vilest COG leaders, who claim to be staunch commandment keeps, men who have ripped apart marriages, destroyed teenagers lives, led people to suicide and even to murder.

Here is a point that few recognize. Unresolved anger, bitterness, envy or jealousy leads to feelings of loss. We must learn to conquer these self-destructive, sinful emotions. All of these are the bricks of the path that leads to depression. “Envy makes the bones rot,” warns the Bible (Proverbs 14:30; English Standard Version). 

Anger, bitterness and sense of loss, all things that are a result of the vile "no contact" policies and other vile teachings of the PCG. PCG leaders could care less about the lives of members as long as they can keep them under control.

Although it is not socially acceptable to believe in evil spiritual forces—Satan the devil and his army of demons—they do exist, and they have made it their express goal to influence and disrupt the minds and attitudes of unsuspecting humans. Satan is the author of angelic and human sin. He is the most depressed being in the universe, and he desires for all humans to feel the same way he does. In Ephesians 2:2-3, the Apostle Paul calls Satan the “prince of the power of the air,” because this evil being broadcasts his negative attitudes of mind worldwide. 

Various COG leaders have been broadcasting their evilness across the airwaves for decades.  How many more need to die because of them, while they blame Satan and demons for the evil they cause.

No wonder so many people don’t understand the negative attitudes and moods plaguing them. The Bible warns that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12; English Standard Version). Satan and the demons place damaging and negative moods in unwary minds. The sudden impulse to end your life comes directly from them.  A Fresh Look at Depression

It’s time to face the reality of depression.

A Book Offering: Introspection and the Journey Through the Church of God Experience

You Are Not Your Story

September 1, 2014

It is deeply heart-opening when people who read Embracing the Stranger in Me: A Journey to Openheartedness share how the stories in the book resonate for them in their own journey.  And then they thank me for being so courageous to share those stories as they feel they have glimpsed into my own vulnerability.  All true.  And it has generated a curiosity for me about what my relationship with this book is – because it doesn’t feel quite so courageous from my perspective.  This book has its own life, energy and flow – thankfully and interestingly.

How are your stories working for you?

And I get to remember, again, what I already knew and now know more deeply.  I am not my stories.  I am not my book. I am not the stories other people tell (or think) about me.  And, you are not your stories.  They do not define you – unless you choose to let them.  Of course, they shape you.  And, you have choices as to how they shape you – looking at life through the human tragedy or drama perspective or from the soul journey perspective – that which we are seeking to learn or experience at the soul level.

There are moments in my life that are seared into my memory as pivotal moments.  One such memory, complete with date, is March 1998.  I was halfway through a severance period, having been royally fired from my job, in the middle of a divorce and having bought a home, for me and my two young boys, predicated on a salary I no longer had with no idea what I was going to do next to support myself.  I was in the highest anxiety of my life – to that point.  I could only focus on what was right in front of me – the next moment, maybe the next day, but certainly not weeks, months or years down the road – because otherwise the stress was overwhelming to the point of being debilitating.

I was sitting in my kitchen, making a choice of which book to pick up and read – the practical What Colour is Your Parachute or the transformative The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.  I didn’t know it would be transformative when I picked it up, but it was.  I was transported to another world.  Mesmerized.  It moved me to tears and to laughter. And I understood maybe for the first time: I am not my stories.  I am not my failure.  I am not my divorce.  I am not my job loss.  These are things that have happened in my life.  I have a choice as to how I view them. The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore offered me a different, expansive option for how to view these things that happened to me.  The author, Alan Cohen, offered that I had attracted these things into my life. If I had the “power” to attract those life altering “negative” things, I had the equal and opposite capacity or power to also attract more life affirming circumstances into my life.

What I understood is that I had been increasingly drifting away from the things I hold true in my life, the things I valued – or said I valued.  My actions did not always support my beliefs and what I thought I valued.  I was in increasing dissonance and did not know how to live a fractured existence anymore. At the time I felt like I was looking out a picture window at my life as it unfolded, I was so dissociated from my experience and my existence.  And I did not have the skills to know how to navigate it – or relationships – in a healthy way.  It made me believe the human tragedy/drama perspective – that I must be a bad person, maybe even evil.  Otherwise, why would these things have happened to me?

In this one day, I was liberated.  I was invited into choice.  I wish I could say it was only a generative upward vortex from then on but of course it wasn’t.  It was, and still is, a human journey, fraught with the rollercoaster of emotions and experiences.  It took me another decade to surrender into the journey with a greater degree of fullness and I’m still learning about surrendering.

The book was and is intended as an offering of stories for others – for you even – in your own journey.  An invitation to journey on, journey deeper, journey more lightly. An invitation to view your stories in a different way from different perspectives, ones that generate more expansiveness, spaciousness and choice.  An invitation to trust what you doubt, to know someone has navigated similar waters with varying degrees of success, sometimes at peace and sometimes in turmoil – because this is life and this is how we grow. To understand that life is more than just the physical experience and to trust the non-physical as you experience it, as you surely do.  To treat yourself with compassion, love and forgiveness and to invite that into your relationships – all of them, even the ones where you would prefer to hold onto a bit of resentment.

When you live your stories as if they are you, you disempower yourself.  When you understand your story shapes your journey but is not you, you show up more fully in your strength and your power and it is a thing of beauty to behold.

Kathy Jourdain

COG False Prophet Thinks His Ministry Is So Important That The Two Witnesses Will Take It Over When They Arrive

After spending over 30 years working for the church in Pasadena, I got to see one false prophet after another boldly proclaim their self-appointed abilities to witness to the church about their visions from their gods.  Every single one of them were liars and frauds. Every single one of them.

It is no different today in 2019 as we witness the lies of Bob Thiel, James Malm and others. Not a single one of these men are speaking on behalf of God.  No amount of zealotry or innumerable dreams can make these two legitimate disciples of the god they claim to follow.

James Malm believes his so-called ministry is such a dynamic strong ministry that when the two witless witnesses arrive they will take over his ministry expounding upon his teachings.

When these two creatures take over his ministry it will allow him to go to his selected "place of safety" where he and a few hundred of his followers will revel in extreme zealotry.  He also expects tens of thousands of people to enthusiastically embrace his zealotry. Malm has no intention of going to Petra where the deceived fool Bob Thiel will be settling in along with Dave Pack and Gerald Flurry.  Malm's god has told him that the new place of safety is Pella:

Further, Petra is NOT God’s prepared place, and I have never taught any such thing! On the other hand, there is most definitely a place prepared by God for his faithful.

In the first century God took the faithful to Pella NOT Petra, and it is very likely that the faithful will return to some kind of refuge camp close to the same Pella in our time.

According to the Chief Pharisee and certified lair, his god is seriously testing the COG at this time and you had better not reject them or you will not be going to Pella! God is sorely testing the church right now to deliberately weed out the unzealous.

Of course God can protect us where we are, but if God tells us to leave for another place through his two prophets, we had better obey Him! This is not a test of God’s power, it is a test of our faithful obedience!

This all about dividing the faithful from the disobedient by forcing people to make a choice to either obey or chose to disobey God. This is why it is so very important to warn the brethren of this coming test and to properly prepare them by expounding the sound doctrine of every Word of God so that they can make an informed decision;

The brethren must also be warned of things to come, so that when these things happen those who have made the wrong choice will remember the warnings and be convicted and turn to live by every Word of God during the period of their Job like correction.

That is unless his god selects him to be one of the two witless witnesses.  Can you imagine the hell Malm would bring to the world with his nastiness and pharisaical piety!  Most of humanity would probably welcome annihilation after listening to his preaching.

...I have repeatedly stated that this work is purely preparatory and is about preparing the brethren, regardless of corporate organization, for the advent of God’s two servants and the coming of our Lord by building a body of studies through the scriptures and expounding sound doctrine.

When God’s two are set up they will take over and they can make any needed changes.

I expect to go to the place God has prepared. I doubt very much if I will be one of these two; but who they will be is in God the Father’s hands alone. I fully expect our Lord to come well within the next 10 years, making the advent of God’s two and the onset of the tribulation probable in a year or two [as world trends and prophecy also indicate].

A few hundred will turn wholeheartedly to God now and go to the place which God has prepared and during the tribulation many tens of thousands will turn enthusiastically to godliness.

I have never made any secret of these things, it would be wise to at least read the material and get informed before making comments. I dare say that your amusement will evaporate quickly once this trial begins James