Adult Wake Up Call ":Will Christians flee to a place in the wilderness? "

… If so, does the Bible give any clues as to where?"

Dr. Robert Thiel

In my view and experience, the concept and teaching in WCG and now most splinters,  of  fleeing or going to the Place of Safety to experience God's protection during the final times before the Second Coming was and still is one of the most dangerous misapplication of scripture they ever came up with.  It was the theme of Gerald Waterhouse's long winded and fanciful sermons, along with loyalty to HWA and belief in his all wise leadership, as he toured the churches spreading the Gospel of Fear and "How the hell is THAT going work?"  

Waterhouse added the extra fact, one of many,  that it was not just a place of safety but a place of final training to be, as I assumed, God as God is God and ruling over the nations.  I detested Gerald's visits, from my youthful self until the end  and told him in the end that he caused more fear, worry and questions in the congregation than he answered and that I was no longer going to answer for him after he left.  I have related that at the same time I asked him what he was going to do when HWA died. I never thought he wouldn't. He said that he'd believe it after three days and three nights.  That was one of the last straws for me and he never had many straws to deal with from me to begin with over the years. 

The Place of Safety is, by far, the most dangerous and ill conceived teaching of WCG and HWA or those around him. Let me be clear. I never believed it and like BI, divine healing only and divorce and remarriage, never gave a sermon on it. I handled questions on it personally and privately and reminded folk that much of this was speculation and simple opinions that we could wait and see about.  BI never made a big impression on me as the NT did not care who your ancestors were from all I could tell nor made a point of it.  But the prophecy based WCG/HWA was hooked on it for any number of reasons.

 I took it as wild speculation based on scripture hoping along with cut and paste theology and wasn't about to tell any church I might have pastored at the time that "it's time to go."  I may have lacked faith, but I did not lack common sense.  That was just never going to happen. 

It is an insane teaching based on taking practically all scriptures related to the topic wildly out of context, both in historical and even some kind of future context.  Ass kissing Evangelicals are trying every way they can to put their idea of how such end time fantasies can be brought about by POTUS, who we all know said  with a straight face , "No one loves the Bible more than me" and Evangelicals fanaticize as being chosen by God.   (I like the concept that this might be so only if God has run out of Locusts:)

Nevertheless, Bob Thiel teaches it as in days of old.  

COGwriter

https://www.cogwriter.com/news/prophecy/will-christians-flee-to-a-place-in-the-wilderness-if-so-does-the-bible-give-any-clues-as-to-where/

"Are some of God’s people actually going to flee right before the tribulation?

According to Jesus, the answer is yes."

"Let this be perfectly clear, there are two groups of God’s people mentioned in Revelation 12–one which goes to a place of safety and one which does not." 

"The idea that those going to the place will undergo final training is one that we in the Continuing Church of God also embrace. We do not believe that the faithful are simply going to save their physical lives, but also be trained so that they can be more effective servants of God. To learn to better spread the love of God to more of humanity.

Most end time Christians, however, are not Philadelphian, but Laodicean and are not promised the type of protection that Jesus promised the Philadelphia Christians."

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I believe most here know the routine and most of the reasonings and meanderings through scripture to "prove" that a Place of Safety, most likely in Petra, Jordan or vicinity is a supposed very real promise for the true church (there is no one true church) today. .(Or ever).

 It falls on deaf ears to say that the Book of Revelation is a failed first century prophecy meant to encourage Jewish Christians trapped in the final days of the Temple in Jerusalem under Roman assault. In this case, as in the days of the Maccabean uprising, the Romans won again. Any fleeing to be done has been done or was unable to be done but it is all done. Take the Book of Revelation as a guide to our times at your own risk.  I'd be a bit careful following a Bob Thiel out into the Jordanian countryside to get away from chaos in the Middle East or anyplace else on the planet. Certainly a Dave Pack, as failed a seer as he has proven to be cannot be trusted to get this right as if was the right thing to teach or do in the first place, which it is not.

The Book of Revelation is not for today and of course, that will start a brawl right there.  It does not predict helicopter gun ships with the faces of men and is full of hyperbole which was a perfectly fine way to write apocalyptic literature. "So only today could we get a 200 million man army" is a bogus and inappropriate response just as much as trying to figure out how the stars of heaven could fall to earth knowing, as we do today, the nature of stars.  It is, however, exaggeration at its best. It was most likely written sometime between January and September of 70 AD,  just prior to the Fall of Jerusalem and never even made it to the three and a half year mark where Messiah would come. The Romans put an end to that pipedream in 8 months.   Whole other topic.

As noted in The Religion of the Orient, which I have quoted in the past:

"Revelation was the swan song of Militant Jewish Christianity. When Jerusalem was destroyed, when Rome waxed grater and more powerful, when the False Prophet gained more and more followers, when the book itself was proved totally false within two years, when it became evident that the Jewish Messiah-Christ would not come, the Hebrew Christians lost their virility and their cult faded under the combined assault of orthodox Judaism and of Gentile Christianity."
pg 479-

So to the point.  The teaching of a Place of Safety and/or Final Training is the most dangerous and anxiety fraught mistaken belief of the WCG and now most splinters of note. It is foolish and a formula for a disaster in religious shenanigans. While the writers of the day may have themselves felt this to be true if one just waited to see, they were as mistaken then as they would be now again.

Christians and humans have always looked for safety and hope in troubled times. Revelation was written for just such a purpose.   Relying on the proof texting waltz through scriptures by those so inclined or the cobbling together of scripture on the answer to this troublesome question of physical survival until the Second Coming is looking for deliverance in all the wrong places.

It never seems to occur to these folk that "If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed" found in Job might be safer for all concerned.  But then facing death graciously as all have in the past and must still is not a strong view of the Church either.  Getting out of it seems more the way to go and the teaching of The Place of Safety goes a long way in the specialness that does not really belong to the Churches of God to begin with.  They will be as mistaken about "we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed" (I Cor 15:51) as Paul was when he had to come to grips with his own mistaken views on the soon and shortness of his times.

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