All Splinter Group Ministers Are Like Vultures

Imagine going through life placing your entire identity into a failed dead organization that no longer exists? An organization that has left a trail of damaged and bloodied people in its wake. A trail of untold misery for tens of thousands of people over the decades and yet there are the few that want to resurrect it.

Samuel Kitchen writes:

The identity we received, as the future bride of Jesus Christ, was the Worldwide Church of God. That identifies us SPIRITUALLY.

Now with our ministers going out, after the death of the apostle, and becoming NEW CHURCHES, they knew how to behave like a Church of God. They were taught VERY WELL by the apostle of Jesus Christ! But by creating a NEW and SEPARTE CHURCH, they found themselves without Jesus Christ!

The only tie to Jesus Christ, they have, is back through Herbert W Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God. As individual ministers and members REMEMBER what they were taught, they reconnect back to their ROOTS. But shortly afterwards, the connection is severed because of THIS SEPARATION. The idea of the necessity of a second or more church of God, is heresy. SO IT CHOKES THE WORD, and the Holy Spirit is constrained and quenched quickly depending on the individual.

The more the individual REMEMBERS what they were taught, the more they go back to it, and reconnect to God. Eventually, if this becomes priority, that individual becomes ONE with the identity of the Worldwide Church of God. Because everything unclean, unholy, and profane is being removed, through a repentant mind seeking obedience to God, they identify more and more with the membership of the Worldwide Church of God, and by listening and supporting Herbert W Armstrong they are becoming ORGANIZED with Jesus Christ IN THIS CHURCH!!!!

This is why some have attempted to control the flow of information. They want to control the collections and libraries of the Worldwide Church of God online, in order to direct the individuals to “other churches”. They continue to propagate the heresy that “another church of God” is acceptable, and that the Worldwide Church of God is no more and dead.

They are like vultures, carrying away part of a carcass, feeding it TO THEIR YOUNG, pieces they've carved out.

A Christmas Polemic: The Armstrongist view on Christmas is really about self-righteousness.

 Christmastide (Fair Use)

 

A Christmas Polemic

By Scout

 

The Armstrongist view on Christmas is really about self-righteousness.  It is not about whether there is a pagan taint to some popular observation.  Armstrongists, for instance, have never examined Thanksgiving.  One could make a superficially plausible argument that Thanksgiving is contaminated by paganism.  The Native Americans who met with the pilgrims were throughgoing pagans.  By Armstrongist standards, so were the pilgrims.  The pilgrims believed in the Trinity.  In addition, Thanksgiving is rooted in sin.  Armstrongists used to believe, and maybe still do, that Native Americans were Canaanites.  And Israel was not supposed to make treaties with Canaanites but was supposed to exterminate them.  So, the first Thanksgiving celebration was a sinful rebellion against God.  So, we have two rebellious, pagan peoples inaugurating an observance in early America that Armstrongists everywhere now cheerfully celebrate.  

Armstrongists do not have a methodology that is applied even-handedly to ferreting out contaminated observances or Thanksgiving, along with Christmas, would not stand.  Hence, the decision against Christmas is not the result of a carefully considered measure that is then applied without bias. One gets the impression that while Armstrongists are serious about the paganism of holidays, they are also selective, for some reason, about which holidays they evaluate. This supports the idea that not observing Christmas is ulterior and just a convenient badge of self-righteousness for Armstrongists. And leveraging Christmas does have value for Armstrongists. Taking a contrarian stand on Christmas also produces a sense of bonding and separateness from the great unwashed masses.   In addition, HWA used to rail about co-workers spending money on Christmas gifts instead of sending the money to the WCG. This was a simply a means of capitalizing on the generosity of the season.  And, of course, there are the pre- and post-Christmas sales.

The fallacy in the Armstrongist reasoning concerning Christmas has a name – it’s a thing. It is called in the discipline of logic the Genetic Fallacy.  This is what Wikipedia says about it:

“The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue) is a fallacy of irrelevance in which arguments or information are dismissed or validated based solely on their source of origin rather than their content. In other words, a claim is ignored or given credibility based on its source rather than the claim itself.”

While one can debate such issues as how much paganism is too much and what condemning pagan historical connections can be found, we lose sight of the fact that the rejection of Christmas is simply an idiosyncratic assertion of self-righteousness in the odd denomination.

And let me state further. Garrison Keillor once said that in Minnesota even the atheists are Lutheran – it’s the Lutheran God they don’t believe in.  Armstrongists have been known to celebrate on December 25th. I recall that we in this region used to go to the WCG District Family Weekend on Christmas Day. It was on a distant college campus. We would eat in restaurants, stay in hotels, have sports tournaments, sometimes a talent show, listen to a special sermonette and sermon, socialize bigly – a kind of custom liturgy all on December 25th. In this celebration of self-righteousness, it was the pervasive influence of mainstream Christianity that we were acknowledging. It wasn’t that we WCG members weren’t attending the Christmas party. Rather, we were the bad kids at the Christmas party.

 

Scout

 

 

Crackpot Prophet: King of Absurdities

 

The fantasy world that the Great Bwama Bob Mzungu Thiel lives in knows no boundaries in absurdities. These are the nutty things he believes he is doing:

There is a remnant of the Philadelphian church left now because:

• The short-work of Romans 9:28 needs to be done.
• Matthew 24:14 still needs to be fulfilled.
• God promised to pour out His Spirit and give dreams and prophecies in the end before Jesus returned (cf. Acts 2:17-18).
• An end time Zerubbabel would be part of the Philadelphia remnant to rebuild the second spiritual temple–which would NOT look anywhere near as impressive as the previous temple physically (Haggai 2:3-4,9).
• All things needed to be restored (Matthew 17:11), and the mantle held. And important truths, such as why God created anything and why He made humans have been restored in the 21st century.
• The full number of Gentiles must come in (Romans 11:25).
• The end time Ezekiel watchman warning must go out (cf. Ezekiel chapters 3, 5, and 6)–and no group has ever done more than what has happened in the CCOG.
• The Philadelphian remnant is targeted by the Beast power before (Daniel 7:25a, 11:29-35; Revelation 12:13-16) before he goes to persecute the rest of the Christians (Revelation 12:17, 13:5-10, 14:12-13).
• Philadelphians are the only one that Jesus promises protection from the coming hour of trial (Revelation 3:10) and that has not happened yet.

Would you give up everything to follow this dude?