Adult Sabbath School: "And Yes Brethren...I am an Apostle"

One of the more interesting antics of those ministers, usually "Pastor Rank" at the time of their departure from WCG and starting up their own version of it as Dave Pack, Gerald Flurry and Ron Weinland has done, is how quickly the rise through their own ranks.  They usually skip right over the title of Evangelist and declare themselves Apostles. The fact is that no one actually ordained them so. They just tend to declare it based on their mighty works and self absorbed views of who they think they are. They see themselves spoken of in the scriptures. Delusional but common practice that gives them the authority they seem to need to do all manner of mischief and wreak all sorts of havoc in the church and the world of delusional theology.

Bob Thiel added a new dimension to the practice by choosing rather to be a Prophet than an Apostle and taking his cue from the phrase "...and give Bob a double portion of your spirit" when seeking a simple anointing for some minor malady as I am lead to believe.  In my world, twice nothing is still nothing.  But if Bob wants to be a prophet, then let it be so if makes him happy and feel important.

Becoming an Apostle, leading one's own splinter seems to be an event that follows what I can only call the "beat down period".  This is where the man wanting the elevate himself, spends an inordinate amount of time prepping his members for the big announcement.  Dave Pack did it with long and twisty sermons that lead to his final declaration of Apostleship. Knowing how much Dave hates working with others preferring them to work for him, I have always suspected Dave would declare himself both of the Two Witnesses to keep it all tidy and under his control.  I believe he so far feels they will come out of RCG, but I can't imagine who he'd let fill that role as they, no doubt, would take the limelight from himself.  Not to worry.  The only thing any Two Witnesses coming out of RCG would accomplish was to make fools out of themselves and Dave.

The phenomenon of declaring oneself an Apostle and leaving the question as to "well who died and made you King" as we used to drip sarcastically at others when we were children and feeling bossed around, unanswered is not new.  They ordained themselves. They took a look at what they have done and still want to do and that's about all it takes. Perhaps they are sincere. Perhaps the ego of it all appeals or even the tithes. I try not to read hearts.  Not my problem.   They tend to work for no man and have a history of not being a team player in the first place.  It seems a bit or a lot of narcissism goes with their declaration of Apostleship as well.  It certainly has to take a narcissist to see themselves spoken of in the scriptures. The symptoms of it certainly fit.

Such was the Apostle Paul as well.  Who ordained Paul an Apostle?  How did he jump from murderous Saul and persecutor of Christians and the Church skipping all the steps in between like, "humble member", "deacon", "local elder", "pastor", "evangelist" to Apostle?

Following is a very interesting study on the topic just who ordained the Apostle Paul by the Institute for Religious  Research.  http://irr.org/

Here is the  introduction to the article for those who might wish to read the full article addressing the topic.  As you know, the appearance of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament has always interested me and HWA often quoted Paul's words in Galatians 1:1 to justify his own authority and status as an Apostle, though he also seems to have risen through no ranks of the or a church before declaring so. 
Between "There were two trees..." and  Paul's quote, HWA was very predictable and I attributed that in my youth to his age, limited theological training and insights and loss of the ability to talk about new things of interest Biblically. Actually he spent a lot of time reminding us just who he thought he was and Pack, Flurry and Weinland have followed in his debris quite nicely in this regard as well. 

" Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father,...   ¹¹ I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. ¹² I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ."

I also wish to note what most never consider (and sorry for repeating it as I have over the past decade) and that is that Paul never met any Gospel Jesus. He never knew of anything written in the Gospels by originally anonymous authors years after he lived, preached and died.  Paul never quotes that Jesus because his Jesus was hallucinatory in nature, words spoken in his mind by Jesus in his Damascus Road tale.  Paul does not reference this story in Galatians as it is told only by Luke in Acts about Paul. In Galatians, Paul says that like Jeremiah and Jesus, he was called from his mother's womb, Saul notwithstanding.

Also when Paul says, in Corinthians 9  " Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? (1 Cor. 9:1 KJV), he can only mean either as in his hallucinatory vision of Jesus in the Damascus Road story or in the sense that "have I not seen" can also mean "Have I not experienced", alluding to his calling and recognition of Jesus as Savior etc.  Paul never saw the physical Jesus at least that we know or he found worth recounting. 

Did Other Apostles Ordain Paul as an Apostle? Part 2: The Case against Paul's Human Ordination

   Posted by: Rob Bowman   

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The case against the LDS claim that other apostles had ordained Paul to be an apostle is actually quite simple. (1) Both Acts and Paul predicate Paul's apostolic ministry to the Gentiles on Christ's appearance to Paul (Acts 9, 22, 26; 1 Cor. 9:1; Gal. 1:15-16). (2) Paul’s description of his meetings with apostles following his conversion (Gal. 1-2) proves that the other apostles never ordained him. (3) Paul states explicitly that his apostleship was neither directly nor indirectly conferred on him by mortals (Gal. 1:1). I shall elaborate on these points in this post, giving special attention to the arguments of LDS scholar Richard Lloyd Anderson, who tries in his book Understanding Paul to show that Paul was subject to the direction of the Jerusalem apostles and ordained under their authority.

Christ's Appearance to Paul

Acts and Paul both predicate Paul's position as an apostle of Christ on the appearance of Christ to Paul that converted him from a persecutor to a proponent of the Christian faith. Acts presents a detailed account of this event, and reports two speeches by Paul in which he delivers similarly detailed, parallel accounts (Acts 9:1-19; 22:1-21; 26:2-23). While Saul (as he was then known) was on the road to Damascus to go persecute Christians, the Lord appeared to Saul and identified himself as Jesus (Acts 9:1-6; 22:5-10; 26:9-15). Paul reported that Jesus had appeared to him in order to make him his minister and witness to the Gentiles:

But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:16-18 KJV).

This is, of course, what Paul spent the rest of his life doing. It describes his activities as an apostle of Christ, the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13).

Paul also describes his conversion from opponent to apostle in his epistle to the Galatians, also pointing out that he had been actively persecuting the church until it pleased God…to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen (Gal. 1:15-16 KJV). Here again, Paul predicated his role as apostle to the Gentiles on Christ’s appearance to him.

I mentioned in my previous post Paul's comment about his position as an apostle equal to those of the Jerusalem apostles in 1 Corinthians: Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1 KJV).[1] Paul points out here that he had seen Jesus Christ because it was the basis for his position as an apostle. It is striking that neither here nor anywhere else, when defending his apostleship, does Paul appeal to his ordination by other apostles. Instead, he grounds his office of apostle on the fact that Christ had appeared to him.

The importance of this point cannot be overstated. If the LDS view were correct, the simplest and most compelling way for Paul to have asserted his apostleship would be to appeal to his ordination to that office. He would merely need to remind people that the apostles had ordained him. Indeed, suppose for the sake of argument that all of the new apostles were ordained in public ceremonies in which the existing apostles laid hands on them. Had there been such an institutional process for becoming an apostle, there would not have been any controversy at Corinth or elsewhere about Paul’s apostolic credentials. What made it possible for many people to question his claim to be an apostle is that his appointment to that office did not come from the other apostles. The argument here is not merely a fallacious appeal to silence, but an argument contrasting Paul's silence about his supposed ordination with what Paul actually does say concerning the basis for his claim to be an apostle......

The Author Concludes...

"I conclude, then, that the LDS claim that the Jerusalem apostles ordained Paul has no realistic hope of being correct. His first meeting was an informal visit with Peter, during which time Paul saw none of the other apostles except James the Lords brother. His second meeting was initiated by Paul to make sure that the Jerusalem apostles did not undermine his apostolic ministry; the result of that meeting was that the pillar apostles acknowledged that God was already working mightily through Paul in apostolic ministry to the Gentiles and sent him on his way with their support. This evidence confirms what Paul in any case states emphatically at the beginning of his epistle to the Galatians:

Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead) (Gal. 1:1 KJV).

The apparent redundancy not of men, neither by man, is an emphatic way of excluding any possible dependency of Paul's position as apostle on other mortal human beings. He was an apostle, not of men, that is, no group of human beings commissioned him; and neither by man,that is, no mortal human functioned as an agent to confer Pauls office on him. Thus, neither directly (not of men) nor indirectly (neither by man) did other apostles ordain Paul to his office of apostle. He received his apostleship directly from God the Father through Jesus Christ himself."

http://www.religiousresearcher.org/2008/11/18/did-other-apostles-ordain-paul-as-an-apostle-part-2-the-case-against-paul’s-human-ordination/

I am sure that those who have climbed from their positions in WCG to their now more lofty authoritative and impressive authoritarian titles have used Paul's rise to justify their own.  Herbert Armstrong did it almost weekly in study after study reminding us as students that no man taught him anything but that he got it all from God.  Sure fine whatever you say.  

David C Pack is no Apostle.  Gerald Flurry is no Apostle. Ron Weinland is no Apostle and Bob Thiel is no Prophet.  How one gets to be on of those is another topic I suppose but Bob's just feeling he is seems close to how they all get there.  

Restored Church of God Compound: The Gardens That Most RCG Members And None Of The Public Will Ever Be Allowed To See

Dave's Proposed Mini-Me Auditorium

For such a beautiful campus, which the almost 2k members around the world paid for:

- many will never be able to see it in person

- where you are allowed to go and what you can do is extremely restricted and surveilled

- let's say sit on a bench somewhere in prayer getting thru a difficult trial before the sunrise or when the sun is setting, expect for security to question why you are there or how you got in after-hours and possibly face correction.

- The campus was initially going to be open to the public with plans to give the city government access to the future Auditorium, however on several occasions upon curiosity of who RCG is people have walked on to campus only to be threatened by security and Dr. Pastor not to come onto the campus again. It remains locked via a gate that can only be opened by folks with keycards.

- Many companies offer generous healthcare plans for their employees while RCG does not, meanwhile many precious, rare and expensive trees have died on the rcg campus due to human error. These trees and plants have cost a lot of money. Money that could have gone towards at least offering the entire staff dental plans at minimum.

- There are many brethren in third world/dangerous countries who jeopardize their lives, travel many miles/hours to be members, give 3 tithes on extremely low income budgets, yet despite RCG having a huge amount of farmland none of it it used to either ship out produce to those in need or turn around and sell it in order to put into a fund for those of our brethren suffering in the world.

- The staff has access to freely farm on the land every year only if they do all the work themselves and manage their plots. There are horses and chickens, and more animals coming, who do they feed?

- Pack had a facade wall installed in the back of his house that can remote rise up to cut out the traffic noise, his life was never in any danger and no one not even in splinters know who he is, had he stood in his beautiful home that he had before moving onto campus that money could have gone to the underpaid staff.

- his old home was approximately a 5 min drive from the campus. Pack is currently still not know widely and has no reason to fear living in public. This was used to justify him moving on the campus

- fun fact: Pack once said people who walk by a piece of trash on the campus and do not pick it up might not even have God's spirit. He forgot to consider perhaps someone could not see it cus they are programmed to walk with perfect posture/face facing forward and fast as not to waste company time getting from building to building. The quicker the better.

- Another fun fact: the buildings and landscape were started by contractors but the majority of the work down to landscape was done by hq employees who in an elaborate scheme and workaround to labor laws were "time-shared" to indoor and outdoor work. Meaning for one part of the morning they did their regular job and during the afternoon they did landscaping but maintain hours as not to go overboard and pay anyone overtime.

- they hired certain staff at the beginning who had strong views and were according to RCG "insubordinate" and once they had completed crucial jobs would get fired.

- There was a time when Pack said that the church would no longer have to be burdened with building the campus that the banks would take care of everything else.

- some of the most hardworking laymembers have the shitiest offices/furniture

- Retirement in RCG is acceptable so long as you are working for free on the campus. The only reason Pack has preached so harshly on the topic of retirement is because over 80% of the church are elderly people. Much of the membership are prime candidates to retire or are on SS/SSI and are not required to tithe on SI/SSI because it is government assistance. 

Can one's "light shine" when one does not discern right from wrong?

I was going to write an article on how angry I am reading the latest pile of steaming bull that came out of Wadsworth, Ohio. I was going to go into a bit of dialogue on spiritual extortion. I was going to do a point by point analysis on just how absolute gutter the material is that has been reported to come out of the "Restored" Church of God in Wadsworth. 

I'm not going to do any of that.  Because the readers here are smart, and they know what's going on. Nothing I really say is "news" to anyone here. The readers here have all had their experience with the same putrid bull in one form or another in their time in Armstrongism, and I am sure a majority share in my disdain and disgust at the tactics of greed and what appears so strongly to be spiritual extortion. It's angering. But I am not going to waste my time, and your time, repeating what everyone here already knows. 

No matter what our current theological positions are - Christian, agnostic, atheist, what have you - one knows a wrong when one sees a wrong. We're here - all of us - because somewhere down the line we've been wronged. Yet even in the glory days of Armstrongism - with as much as we were expected to bust out of our earnings - were we ever expected to "hand over" as much as is expected to be handed over in Packland. So do we get it? Of course, we get it. All of us do. 

It's not unique to just Armstrongism. This sort of thing happens in mainstream religion just as easily. I've seen an experienced that, too - all under a supposed cloud of piety and religiosity that looks glorious from the outside but stinks to the highest heights from the inside. I've seen televangelists wearing $3,000.00 suits off the dimes of widows and orphans. I've heard pastors claim that those who only live on Social Security must tithe just as those who are CEO's of a business. I've seen the "holier than thous" walk around in Church with large leather-bound King James Bibles and that "voice" of "authority" that can only come from one who claims to be such a mighty Christian. I've seen the theatrics of denominational leaders standing on high placed pulpits proclaiming in Old English Christian-ese their weekly diatribes of holy talk. I've heard the old-English thous, thees, and doth-eths proclaimed from thou highest perch in thy house. I've witnessed the incredible structures that have been built in the name of tithing and all under the shelter of 501 (C) 3. Don't tell me I'm not the only one who sees that things can be just as wrong on one side of the fence as they can be on the other side of the fence. I see that and all of the blatant and nauseating hypocrisy that goes right along with it. Just as our nation is divided politically, our nation is also divided spiritually. The spiritual division is not just Christian vs Atheist or Christian vs Agnostic. It's Christian vs Christian. It's denomination vs denomination. It is sect versus sect. It's corner church vs. corner church. It's the hallmarks of Corporate Christianity on full display. And again, I can't be the only one seeing this. I know many do. It just isn't talked about as greatly because it's uncomfortable to do so. 

Armstrongism was born because this great religious confusion was exposed, and Armstrongism claimed to have the answer to the problem - but turned out to be and become just as confused and divided as the very ones they were railing against for over seventy years. Of course, those on the inside could see the religious confusion and exposed hypocrisy during that entire time - but Armstrong at the helm gave people hope that maybe he's right anyway. Until he died. And then the Packs and the Weinlands and the Flurrys and the Thiels all came out of the woodwork exposing every little crumb in every nook and cranny of confusion and division you could ever find. And then reality hit again - it's the same corporate bull that was in the Mainstream Christian world many came out of. And it still continues to this day. 

If you're looking for a physical escape to the physical realities of Corporate Christianity, you have better luck of finding a needle in an acre-wide field of hay then you do finding the dream physical church you're looking for. The only thing and the only way to find satisfaction that is true is to personally find spirituality from within flowing outwards. I'm not going to sit here and go on a diatribe with this post about becoming a Christian, or Christ-centered Christianity or freedom in Christ. Most know my positions on this. I'm just going to say this: 

Being a loving person and loving your neighbor - and God - isn't about submitting yourself to a structure of corporate rules from a corporate business, no matter how enshrouded they are in a deceptive illusion of religious piety. It's exhibiting, showing, and being love in every situation of life one can come upon. ONLY with this foundation and framework can one begin to be used no matter where they are and who they are associated with and in contact with. This foundation of love allows you to be "in" the world without being "of" the world. It is the only narrow way that there is. It is the only way one can bear fruit, no matter what or who they are affiliated with. 

It's not about "Common", or stables, or buildings, or trees, or various arbor. It's not about streams or fountains. It's not about buildings or houses or mansions. All of these things are physical and every one of these things will perish and pass. It's about faith expressing itself in love. It's about hope. And it's about making a difference, not in the pocketbook of one, but in the lives of many. 

So if you are as discouraged and angry about not only the shenanigans and bull coming out of not only Wadsworth but seemingly every corner and in every place and it seems overwhelming and worthwhile to just give everything up, then turn on your own light of love and shine through the cracks of Corporate Christianity and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. It might only make a difference to one, or five, or ten. It might someday make the difference in fifty or one hundred. But this is the narrow road and the light of life. You can be a world-changer one life at a time. And at the end of the day, that will be what's important. 

³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

⁴¹ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

⁴⁴ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

⁴⁶ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25, NIV)

Submitted by SHT