Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
Imagine how lonely life must be to sit at home in your kitchen and crank out endless long articles about how awful other Church of God groups are because they refuse to listen to the mindless rants of a man who wants to burden down members with more pharisaical laws than the ones they are already keeping. After making a demand earlier this year upon all Church of God members that they MUST keep a seven day Days of Unleavened Bread at a feast site, in which he was totally ignored, he is now lashing out at all of the reprobates in the various COG groups.
The purpose of the Festivals of God has been frustrated by today’s Ekklesia, because they misuse God’s Festivals.
First they refuse to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread for God’s commanded full seven days, second they keep the Fall Feast of Tabernacles for the seven days but they do so improperly, then they pollute the High Holy Days and weekly Sabbaths, and finally they keep these festivals on dates other than the dates which God has commanded.
These Festivals of God were intended to be occasions when people could gather to hear the priesthood/ministry teach the Word of God, which is what we claim to do today, but do we really?
Can you imagine seven days of having to sit there and listen to Chief Pharisee James Malm pontificate on how he thinks the letter of the law should be kept! Ghastly days! The crackling flames of the lake of fire would be a perfect respite!
“My personal observation is that those who worked long and hard in school, do well in their Christian walk. Those who didn't study and do their homework, continue the pattern for the rest of their lives. ..... or they will become spiritual failures. Then they will come to Banned, posting that there is no God and that the bible is not His inspired word.”
Spong served as rector of St. Joseph's Church in Durham, North Carolina, from 1955 to 1957; rector of Calvary Parish, Tarboro, North Carolina, from 1957 to 1965; rector of St. John's Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, from 1965 to 1969; and rector of St. Paul's Church in Richmond, Virginia, from 1969 to 1976. He has held visiting positions and given lectures at major American theological institutions, most prominently at Harvard Divinity School. He retired in 2000. As a retired bishop, he is a member of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops.[3] During his tenure as Bishop of Newark, confirmed communicants in the diocese virtually halved, from 44,423 in 1978, to 23,073 in 1996.
Spong describes his own life as a journey from the literalism and conservative theology of his childhood to an expansive view of Christianity.
Book Overview
A global and pioneering leader of progressive Christianity and the bestselling author of Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Eternal Life explains why a literal reading of the Gospels is actually heretical, and how this mistaken notion only entered the church once Gentiles had pushed out all the Jewish followers of Jesus. A man who has consciously and deliberately walked the path of Christ, John Shelby Spong has lived his entire life inside the Christian Church. In this profound and considered work, he offers a radical new way to look at the gospels today as he shows just how deeply Jewish the Christian Gospels are and how much they reflect the Jewish scriptures, history, and patterns of worship. Pulling back the layers of a long-standing Gentile ignorance, he reveals how the church's literal reading of the Bible is so far removed from these original Jewish authors' intent that it is an act of heresy. Using the Gospel of Matthew as a guide, Spong explores the Bible's literary and liturgical rootsits grounding in Jewish culture, symbols, icons, and storytelling traditionto explain how the events of Jesus' life, including the virgin birth, the miracles, the details of the passion story, and the resurrection and ascension, would have been understood by both the Jewish authors of the various gospels and by the Jewish audiences for which they were originally written. Spong makes clear that it was only after the church became fully Gentile that readers of the Gospels took these stories to be factual, distorting their original meaning. In Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy, Spong illuminates the gospels as never before and provides a better blueprint for the future than where the church's leaden and heretical reading of the story of Jesus has led usone that allows the faithful to live inside the Christian story in the modern world.
"As far as the evolutionary debate is concerned, it is really over, and if the religious community does not know that Darwin has already won, they are simply not abreast of the times. Only in the South do I still hear people debating for Creationism."
"I wish you well. However, survival rate in that context, please know, is not high"
The self-appointed apostle and Elijah of the improperly named "continuing" Church of God Bob is lashing out at other Church of God members who went with other splinter groups.
The doubly-blessed one quotes a letter from the Church of the Eternal God about "why" when people "fall away" they start eating pork and doing other fun things.
Over the years, when members disassociated themselves from the Church, they immediately began to eat pork, celebrate Christmas and Easter, and reject the observance of the weekly and annual Sabbaths. We ask again, how could it happen?
The apostle Paul wondered about the same phenomenon. He phrases his puzzling observations in these terms in Galatians 1:6-7: “I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
Christ warned in the parable of the sower that some would hear and immediately receive the word with joy, but because they have no root in themselves, they only endure for a while and when problems come, they immediately stumble and leave (Matthew 13:20-21). Others may hear the word but don’t really understand it (even though they may think that they do), and so Satan comes and immediately snatches away what was sown in their hearts (Matthew 13:19; Mark 4:15). In all these cases, their departure from the Truth comes quickly and suddenly.
When someone detaches himself and cuts himself off from Christ as the vine, he will wither away (John 15:1-6). This process occurs quickly. Christ showed us how quickly this can happen when He cursed the unfruitful fig tree. We read that “immediately the fig tree withered away” (Matthew 21:19), so that the disciples asked, “How did the fig tree wither away so soon?” (verse 20). CEG
Then the holistic dreamy Chief Overseer, Bob the Elijah writes:
Yes, many quickly fell away from the truth...
But sadly, most who did not fall away completely from the truth, chose to ignore certain biblical principles and priorities and settled with becoming independent or otherwise affiliating with Laodicean leaders.
What does Elijah Bob think he is? Is he not independent? Did he not set up his own group? Did he not lead people to ignore biblical principles when they started to follow him? Is he not a "Laodicean" leader? I do not doubt that his African followers are sincere seekers of God who thought they were doing the right thing when they hitched their wagons to his doomed train, but due to their desire to follow a human leader, they joined up with a wayward Laodicean leader that will ultimately lead them to their doom.
Bwana Bob really needs to eat some bacon, it would calm his hysterics down some.
