Gerald Weston: Why is he always so smug, self-righteous and condescending?

Of course, we know the answer to that question. Herbert Armstrong and his spiritual guru, Rod Meredith, taught him well. Having spent most of his life in a church that proclaimed itself superior to all others and that claimed to have the answer to EVERYTHING spiritual and most of all represented "original Christianity" why shouldn't we expect him to always act like a self-righteous jerk?

Weston recently wrote an article for the Living Church of God News about "Why are we here?".

In typical Church of God fashion, he mocks other Christians and people outside the LCG as inferior to the superior LCG members. He starts off by mocking Christians and others because of funerals.  As we are all well aware of by now, due to the many years we spent in Armstrongism the church always thought they held the monopoly of the proper way to conduct funerals and what to say.

Westons says:

Funerals tell us a lot about how people think. Family members often speak emotionally of the deceased, while others tell humorous anecdotes as a means of coping with their emotions at such a difficult time. When one tries to discuss the big questions of life and death, however, most who are not of God’s people sit there bored, looking down or off into space.

I have to say that the many funerals I have been to outside the COG have been far more loving, gracious and God-centered that most of the bunk I heard in COG funerals and memorials where ministers mocked heaven and other Christian beliefs. 

Weston continues to mock them with this:

Deep down, people do want to know “what it’s all about,” but most do not think there is a real answer. “Heaven” does not excite them. Clerics of various persuasions try to make their ideas about the afterlife sound exciting, but although they rarely agree with each other, they even less often consider that the deceased have a productive future ahead. But you and I understand what most do not. Why would God create beings to go where there is nothing productive to do? To most outside God’s Church, the afterlife is what I often call a “candy store in the sky” or some kind of celestial LSD trip. For Roman Catholics and many others, it may be the so-called “beatific vision”—staring into the face of God for eternity—that brings supreme happiness and satisfies all our longings. But is this what God is doing—creating beings to find final happiness just staring into His face for eternity?

And yet Weston and his cronies believe they are going to become a god as God is God, which is just as ludicrous as people floating around on clouds playing harps for eternity.

Weston then goes on to talk about his finding of the "truth" and the kingdom of God. Weston and most in Armstrongims love to claim that Christians never talk about the kingdom of God that is expected to come.  I have heard more said about that kingdom by Christians I am in contact with than I have EVER heard ministers and members ever talk about on a personal level.

When I was first beginning to understand the Truth, I thought the difference between Heaven and the Kingdom of God was only a matter of location. Rather than exist up in the sky, Heaven would come here on earth. I certainly never thought that my reward would be to stare into God’s face forever, but my ideas were vague and, frankly, not exciting. Heaven, though, certainly seemed like the better of the two options, and attending church services seemed to be essential to reaching the better alternative.

He continues, with the typical smug COG belief

We should all know that the Gospel is about the Kingdom of God, and that Christ is central to the Gospel message. The good news is that His Kingdom is coming, and that we can be born into it. Christ, the King, is the way into that Kingdom (John 14:6). The Bible is an expression of His will, and it shows us what our part in the Kingdom will be. But let us not get ahead of the story. 

The sad part with Armsgtrongism is that Jesus Christ is rarely ever part of the picture. Weston and many splinter cult leaders are embarrassed by Jesus. Their focus is upon themselves and their great wisdom and of course the asinine prophecies and predictions they all make or are obsessing on the law till it is nothing more than swill being tossed to swine.

If the COG and LCG are filled with such glorious knowledge that is unknown to Christians, then why are so many in the Church of God so miserable? Church members are leaving the groups in droves.  Others are driven to suicide, perversions and even murder. Why would any real Christian ever what to be in a kingdom governed by these people?

Spreading Christmas Shade

Spreading Christmas Shade

Growing up in an irreligious home, I hardly saw a connection between Jesus and Christmas. I could tell even as a young teen that it was more about marketing to maintain the health of a consumer-based economy. So when I turned into COG-land in college and was told Christmas was pagan and should not be observed, it was an easy sell. 

But what always struck me as bizarre was the sheer vitriol expressed by church members toward the holiday and those that celebrated it. The historical arguments tying every little element of the season directly to rank paganism and Mystery Babylon the Great, while interesting, failed in bolstering their arguments with direct Scripture. I learned later that there was another school of thought with compelling historical evidence that first and second century Christians were observing Sundays and celebrating the birth and resurrection of Christ, completely unrelated to paganism. In fact, paganism specifically related to the Roman cult of Sol Invictus was not part of the Roman culture until the fourth century. This would suggest that Roman paganism had very little influence on Christianity for three centuries. And from a logical standpoint, it makes no sense that Christians were regularly filling the first chapters of Fox's book of martyrs if they were socially engineering the empire, syncretizing with their persecutors.

For years, I've watched ministerial wannabe's parade up to the lectern every December with sermonettes to end all sermonettes on the greatest evil to ever befall mankind. In between all their spit and rage, I would have to ask myself: what does roasting babies in Babylon have to do with present-day Christians like my brother and his lovely family who partake of normal family rituals like eating together, singing together and worshipping together at a time when they all acknowledge that Jesus was the Christ that came in the flesh? He was born a man and every year, Christians re-enact nativity scenes, acknowledging that belief.

I was surprised when I came across an article by COGWA about Christmas this year that was trying to take a rather new (to me) and novel approach to throwing shade at Christmas.

The title, "The Incarnation: How Christmas Hides Its Meaning" caught my attention. Mike Bennett asks, "If Christmas is really about the birth of the Son of God, why do so many concentrate on Christmas shopping and whitewashed pagan customs, while so few focus on the incredible, life-changing truth of the incarnation?"

Mike goes on to argue that very few people focus on the incarnation of Jesus. His evidence is all the extras surrounding the holiday and the growing number of secularists around the globe who could care less about the incarnation.

While all of that is true, what Mike fails to realize is that people who do consider themselves devout Christians, DO, in fact, care about the incarnation and do put that at the center of their observance. Every year, my brother's family (even if not historically or Biblically accurate completely) re-enact the nativity story at their church. There is absolutely nothing about their Christmas observance that hides the "incredible, life-changing truth of the incarnation."

What is fantastically ironic about Mike's attempt at throwing shade at the holiday, only highlights how the COG's never celebrate or acknowledge the incarnation whereas Christians observing Christmas, rehearse that truth every single year without the prompting of Scripture. How is celebrating Christ's birthday, the incarnation (not solicited in Scripture) actually any different from Armstrongists that observe Independence Day and Thanksgiving (not solicited in Scripture) to honor God or Jews that observe Purim and Hanukkah to honor God for delivering them from their enemies?

120 years of additional research and scholarship has transpired since the Adventist movement took aim at everything Catholic as being directly adopted from the Babylonian Mystery religions. There is evidence that suggests Christians adopted Sunday and celebrated the Resurrection and the Birth of Christ within the first 100 years and it had nothing to do with the paganism and secularism that surrounded and persecuted them. Were they man-made observances not sanctioned by Scripture? YES! Does that automatically make them pagan? NO! Not anymore pagan than Thanksgiving that Armstrongites observe or Hanukkah that Jesus and His apostles observed.

HWA and his followers have always used various forms of faulty logic.  "Dichotomous reasoning" is a COG mainstay used to proffer "proof" for some of the faulty doctrines in the church. This is the faulty logic whereas everything is black or white, all or nothing. A two-dimensional worldview that is symptomatic of many forms of psychosis and various personality disorders.

COG's love to quote Jude when he exhorts the brethren to "earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." This faith, they claim, is the same truths HWA restored to Christianity after 1900 years. Ignoring Biblical and historical context, another mainstay of Armstrong theology, has left them in the dark whereas scholars have been shedding light  through dark glass since the invention of the printing press.

What was the faith that needed to be contended for so earnestly? What was the biggest threat to Christianity at the close of the first century after the death of all the original apostles, save John?

I was shocked to learn that at the time of Christ, Judaism was the only religion, philosophy, worldview and culture on the whole planet that believed  or ever believed that physical fleshly life could be restored from death. This belief of a resurrection from the dead is what was "foolishness" to the Greek. The centerpiece to Christianity is accentuated by Paul in I Corinthians 15:1-4

"Now brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to Scriptures, that he was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

Paul goes on to list all of the eye-witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. We can see among Gentiles during Paul's apostleship, the resurrection of Jesus in the flesh was already in question 20-30 years after His death and resurrection. John tells us what was being questioned and in doubt 60 years after what Jesus accomplished in I John 2:18-23 and says plainly in 2 John 7, "I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is a deceiver and an antichrist." Jude says ungodly men are turning grace into license to sin and deny the Christ.

It does seem to appear that the biggest problem Christianity faced at the beginning was the unbelief that Christ came in the flesh as a man, died, and was resurrected in the flesh. This makes perfect sense. Once a generation arose that did not have first-hand experience with Jesus, it only stands to reason that it now may be taken by the next generation and new adherents from a non-Jewish view that compromising ideas would arise to account for who and what Jesus was and what actually happened. 

What literally came into question was the incarnation. This may be why there is evidence as early as the early 2nd century of Christians observing the birth of Christ. This was an annual acknowledgment in their faith of the incarnation that many were doubting and began filling the ranks of a new Gnostic Christianity.

This is a valid working theory that is fitting with our addition of scholarship and research over the  last 120 years. For all of the shade the Adventist Movement has thrown at Christmas down to this very week, is it even possible that the COG's could revisit the topic and reconsider just how awful they have been in portraying fellow Christians all these years?

My own opinion is that Christmas is no different from other man-made holidays that have non-pagan foundations. That means we are free to take it or leave it. I stopped observing the holiday as a teenager for non-religious reasons. I will continue to do so but without passing judgment on fellow Christians who do so for reasons completely unrelated to roasting babies in fires and participating in drunken orgies.

by Stoned Stephen Society

God and Evergreens