LCG: We Are Created In God's Image So We Can Become A God Like God Is

 

LCG's J. Davey Crockett III writes:

Our human form is like our Creator’s form, which is to say that we are like God, and not that God is like us. Jesus explained this to His disciples when He said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Christ is like the Father in form and character. 

 

The Apostle Paul made it very plain when he explained, “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth…. Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising” (Acts 17:26–29). 

 

When one understands our origins as human beings and where we are going in the plan our heavenly Father has for mankind, the pervasive fog of confusion clears, revealing the purpose for human life. There is no basis for racial prejudice. Paul stated emphatically that “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11). Every human being has been created in God’s image. 

 

This understanding reveals why Star Wars biology does not resemble actual biology: God specifically designed intelligent life—truly intelligent life—to be like Him. The diverse races of fantasy and science fiction can easily make one’s head spin; by contrast, God’s design of mankind is so perfect in its simplicity that there is confusion only if we clumsily misinterpret ourselves. 

 

Wonderfully, God intended us to share not only His form but also His substance. Paul made this important point to the Christians in his day: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit… from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). 

 

To become like God, not only in form but in our spirit and character, is a destiny that few can really imagine—yet it is our Creator’s true and glorious purpose for us.

The Black God: Science and the Ethnocentric Doctrine of God of Armstrongism

 

A Sub-Saharan African Bearing Y-chromosome Haplogroup A

The Black God

Science and the Ethnocentric Doctrine of God of Armstrongism

by Scout

 

“So Adam looked like Jesus Christ. Adam also looked like God the Father. God said, "Let US make man after OUR image." Both Jesus Christ and God the Father look alike…When Jesus was on earth 4000 years later, He looked exactly like the Father. Jesus was "the express image of His {the Father's} person" (Heb. 1:3). But Jesus also looked like the average Jew!   Since Adam looked like Christ and Christ looked like the average Jew, then Adam — the first man — must have resembled the Jew. Adam therefore was a white man as are the Jews! Jews are not Negroes, as a few colored people contend. The Jews are Whites.”    Herman L. Hoeh, The Race Question, The Plain Truth Magazine, April 1957.  

 

Herman Hoeh was wrong in believing that God looks like a White man.  If God has a body, then he looks like a Black man.   If one wishes to believe that God is corporeal and that the Imago Dei refers to nothing more than physical appearance, then one must be willing to accept its implications.  And these implications must be informed by science.  The days are fading away where one might claim to preach a Biblical message and ignore the findings of science.  For that reason, empirical evidence must be taken seriously and theologically.  The Bible is the Book of God’s word and Nature is the Book of God’s works. Both books must be read. 

Early Modern Man in Brief

There was a serious conflict between early modern man and another pre-modern hominid species.  Nobody knows much about the details of the warfare but scientists do know something of the consequences.  Early man, it is believed by many, wiped out the other pre-modern hominid species.  But the moderns also interbred with the pre-moderns because we have traces of the genetics of the pre-moderns in our genomes.  This conflict happened about 40,000 years ago.  The modern men were Black and migrated out of Africa into other locations around the globe, including Western Europe.  The people who were wiped out were Neanderthals and they were light-skinned, light haired and had light eye color.  Herman Hoeh might refer to these pre-modern people as pre-Adamic.  The out-of-Africa Black men mutated into many different hominid forms including the White Europeans and East Asians. 

The Truth is Not in the Stars but in Our Genomes

Below is a Y-chromosome phylogenetic haplogroup mapping of the human race showing how haplogroups are logically nested and interrelated. 

If you plumb the depths of this, you will notice three prominent features.  Note that the passing of time starts on the left and runs to the right. 

1.     The earliest human beings are y-chromosome haplogroup A.  This haplogroup and some subclades are shown in the shaded area at the lower left.  These people are sub-Saharan Blacks.  Y-chromosome Adam (q.v., Wikipedia) was Black.  See the photograph at the top of this essay for a photo of the physical type.  

 

2.     Most modern Blacks are y-chromosome haplogroup E – well ensconced in the human Family Tree, if you check the chart above.  So don’t let anyone tell you that Blacks are pre-Adamic. It is ironic that a few Armstrongists and Christians claim a pre-Adamic origin for Blacks.   In fact, almost all Whites and Asians have some Neanderthal (true pre-Adamites) ancestry.  African Blacks have essentially no Neanderthal ancestry because Neanderthals originated in Eurasia and did not make it to Africa.

 

3.     Lastly, a topic that I have written about elsewhere, the haplogroup mapping does not correspond in its logical structure to the traditional interpretation of the glossed “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10.  Understand that the logical structure of the haplogroup map is not something fabricated for easy reference.  It is hard-coded in our DNA.

HAL and the Black God

Herman Hoeh deduced that God is, in appearance, a White man.  His logic is given in the quotation at the top of this essay.  I will refer to that as the Herman Hoeh Algorithm, HAL for short.  HAL no doubt informs the White Supremacist thinking found among some Armstrongists.  If a person has always been a White racist then think how nicely such views are supported by Armstrongism.  No repentance required.  It would be unsurprising if Armstrongism has attracted such people over the years. 

But, alas, if the first man was Black and we apply HAL to this known scientific fact, then God is Black in appearance.  Adam looks like Jesus who looks like God.  Jesus then might have been descended from Black Jews – Jews who trace their ancestry to a migration into North Africa at the time of the Exodus.  Perhaps, that is why he came to his own and his own received him not.  Black Jews still have difficulty being accepted in modern-day Israel.  Maybe this is why Simon of Cyrene, held by some to be a Black from North Africa, was willing to help Jesus with the cross.  Conjectures could abound. 

If one believes that God has a body in his essence, then HAL and science dictate that God looks like a Black man.  God, Jesus and Adam are all Black men.  If God has a body, then his body must have racial properties.  And Herman Hoeh discovered how to deduce these racial properties from the Bible and originated HAL.  The problem is, he did not have the science to know what Adam, looked like.  So, he erroneously deduced that God was a White man. 

The God of Christianity

In orthodox Christian dogma, God has neither a body nor racial category.  Christians are not pre-occupied with what God looks like.  That fixation, it seems, is owned by mostly Restoration Movement denominations like the WCG and its myriad offshoots.   And some of the prominent denominations in this Movement have had trouble in adopting a mature and inclusive view of race.  

Jesus looks like a Jew even though in Western Christianity Jesus is groundlessly depicted as a Western European.  The Ashkenazi Jews are mixed with European ancestry and have a Europeanized appearance.  But Jesus looked like a Mizrahi Jew, the people who are descended from the Jews of Jesus’ day.  Anthropologists know what the average Jews of that time looked like.  And even Armstrongists have made the point that Jesus looked like a non-descript average Jew.  The physical anthropology is that Jesus was about 5’1”, weighed about 110 lbs., had an olive or brown complexion, aquiline nose and curly or perhaps even frizzy hair.  To a person who is of Western European ancestry and believes in British-Israelism, Jesus looked like a “Gentile”.  His chances of being admitted to Ambassador College would have been small. He is too dark and too small.  

In Christian orthodoxy, God is formless spirit and can manifest himself as he wills – a whirlwind, a rock, a pillar of fire – and he has no essential racial nature.  So, he could manifest himself as a White or Black man or an Indian Chief but that is a theophany and not what he is in his existential nature.  

He talked some racial smack at me and so I wrote back and told him that I was going to pray that God, throughout eternity, would always manifest himself to him as Moms Mabley, a famous black comedienne who would wear funny garb.  He wrote back and said he did not know who Moms was.  He hit me with some scriptures about God’s glorious appearance.  I wrote back, I think, it has been a while ago, and told him that maybe God would make an exception just for people like him. 

Summary Statement

You can see why some people have an enormous emotional investment in Herman Hoeh’s legendarium and are reluctant to leave it.   Some people need to feel that they are a part of God’s inner circle.  Nothing could be better for White people than to be a member of God’s race.  This means that for eternity they are more like God than non-White people are, not as result of spiritual formation but as a result of racial status determined at birth (“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh”). White people would be the only people who are actually in the image of God, if image refers to the physical body. Thankfully, this view is malarkey.  God does not have a body and racial properties.  He made all races and both genders to be in his image.  And Paul describes in Ephesians 4:23-24 the only image that counts when he wrote, “…be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness (kata Theon) of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

 

Crackpot Prophet Now Offering Financial Tips: "Your wages, your salary, your profit, your income BELONGS TO GOD, not to you."

God must have had a really sick sense of humor when he imagined up our Great Bwana to Africa and 100 Caucaisans as He was creating the foundations of the world. On the other hand, He may have known that in these perilous end times that we might need a little humor to brighten our day, and thus we have Bwana Bob at our disposal.

As was mentioned the other day, he apparently does not have the ability to come up with an original thought in spite of all those PhDs, classes at Ambassador and Fuller, and online courses from that great theological university in India with its extensive library housed in a trailer. But, again these are perilous times and we have to be gentle on the Great Bwana as the burdens he carries are enormous as he witnesses to the world his great theological understandings.

This all leads us to today as he triples down on tithing commands he imagines are still required. But as usual, he has to drag out the dead Herbert to reinforce his theories. The Great Bwana has to quote from a 1959 article that Herbert wrote in Ending Your Financial Worries.

Given all of the recent documentaries exposing various cults recently and how they demand and manipulate their followers into handing over their money, this is a prime example of the cultism that we were conned with.

The Great Bwana writes (always in a state of fear):

2022 has been a difficult financial year for many around the world. Food and gas prices have been rising. Some are warning about recession and some about stagflation. 

 

The stock markets around the world are jittery. Many around the world are concerned about international matters, including what will happen with the USA because of its coming elections. 

 

The USA has the most debt any nation in world history has ever had–and it keeps going up. The per-capita debt of those in the UK are among the highest of all time. The Eurozone has struggles between members, plus its own debt issues. 

 

Those in Asia and South America have seen their economic standards of living generally rise over the past decades, but great apprehension exists. There have been gains and losses in some parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Then the Great Bwana goes on to quote the dead Herbert. Here are a few of Herbert's delightful words:

"People say: “What I earn is MINE — I can do what I please with it!” 

 

But is the money you earn really your own? Don’t be too sure. Notice these FACTS about your income you probably haven’t known! 

 

What you earn is not yours! 

 

The man who says, “What I do with the money I earn with my own labor is nobody’s business — I produced it — it belongs to me,” is mistaken. 

 

What you earn, by work performed or investments made is not yours — not any of it"

Then this: 

But the first claim is GOD’S claim. You probably never realized this fact before — but it is a fact. God Almighty the living CREATOR-RULER of the universe claims it all — every dollar — every pound — every franc — every mark. Your Maker who gives you the very air you breathe tells you it all belongs to Him, not to you!

And this: 

But didn’t you earn it? Didn’t YOU produce it? 

 

Not exactly! Everything produced — money, and all that money can buy — comes out of the earth. You didn’t produce that! God created that. You merely applied certain energy in physical action and in thinking to what God had created and owned. And God created even that energy you expended — He created your thinking processes. He not only created, originally, but He sustains what He created, including all force and energy.

And this: 

God Almighty says, in His written Word: “The earth is the Eternal’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods” (Psalm 24:1-2). These inspired words are repeated in I Corinthians 10:26. 

 

“Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is MINE,” claims God (Job 41:11). 

 

“Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the ETERNAL’S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is” (Deut. 10:14). “All the earth is MINE” (Ex. 19:5). 

 

And this:

However, God is a God of love. He knows your need. God is concerned about you. He is not selfish. He has your interest and welfare in mind. Therefore God has made A LAW respecting that portion of HIS WEALTH which your thinking, and your labor has extracted and worked upon. 

 

Get this fixed thoroughly in your mind. Your wages, your salary, your profit, your income BELONGS TO GOD, not to you. Probably you never realized this before. This may seem like a new idea to you. But it is not an idea — it is a fact. 

 

Therefore GOD HAS A RIGHT to take, or dispose of what you regard as your income AS HE WILLS. He OWNS it. It is not yours, it is HIS! 

 

So God, the rightful OWNER of your income, has MADE A LAW respecting its disposal and its use. By virtue of being Creator and Sustainer of the earth and all in it, God is supreme RULER and LAWGIVER.

Then this: 

The farmer or gardener may plant seed, plow, and expend his labor in raising food. But WHO supplied the SOIL? WHO created the living process that makes the seed sprout and grow? Who sends the rain, or provides water for irrigation? Who set the sun in the sky and causes it to shine and warm the earth? Who causes the plant to drink out of the soil the minerals, vitamins, and good elements, and to grow into the vegetable, the grain, or the fruit? Did YOU perform this part of the business of raising the food you eat? 

 

When we sit down and really THINK, we shall see that God supplies about NINE parts of everything man makes or produces, and man’s thinking, planning, and working supplies only about ONE part. But God does not take nine tenths of the proceeds, or the income. He doesn’t take even eight tenths, or seven, or even three or two tenths. God is GENEROUS. God has reserved for HIS use only one little tiny tenth of what is produced out of His earth through His forces and energies! 

 

God takes only ONE tenth. And after you have been honest in PAYING God’s tenth to God’s chosen representative, then — AND NOT UNTIL THEN — God has decreed that the other NINE tenths becomes legally YOURS!

There are two things that Herbert's old covenant tithing demands did. It financially ruined untold members lives and it kept the fat cats living lives of luxury as their members suffered.

You can see through Herbert's reliance on Old Covenant teachings why there was a need for a New Covenant understanding. The New Covenant was to be an earthly foretaste of the kingdom to come where worship was freely done - not enforced, demanded, or expected. Looking towards sitting at the heavenly banquet is far better than sitting at an empty table while your church leader dines off Imperial Russian china, eats with gold utensils, and fills his delicate crystal with Louis XIII Cognac.